


Parka (The Only Thing She Had Left)

by SleepyKalena



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (i'm serious about the angst here), Angst with a Happy Ending, DangerousLee Rough Terrain, Established Relationship, F/M, Heavy Angst, Jyn gets to bond with other people in Rogue One, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Pre-Hoth, Rebelcaptain May 4th Gift Exchange, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-05-01 23:56:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 55,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepyKalena/pseuds/SleepyKalena
Summary: “I’ve been given an assignment,” Cassian said without so much as a greeting, or even bothering to look up at her as he continued to look through all the shelves and closets to make sure every square inch of her quarters was clear of anything the Empire could use for themselves (assuming they decided to merely raid the base rather than destroy it outright).Jyn wanted to go with him. She wanted to make sure that they left together so that they could watch each other survive. But if things go wrong and they don’t make it…Cassian is sent on a mission while Jyn is ordered to stay behind with the Alliance High Command.It's just an extraction, she thinks, but the days keep passing and he still hasn't come back for his parka like he promised.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kobo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kobo/gifts), [wintersend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersend/gifts).



> Happy May 4 to [wintersend](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintersend)! This is actually a fic I've been meaning to write since December, intended for [Kobo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kobo), but because Sissi's actual prompt is directly related to this particular fic, I've decided to make some adjustments and dedicate this fic to you both! The actual prompt fic will be released once this story wraps up, but until then, I will not reveal the giftee's prompt for the exchange. (Sissi, I'm pretty sure you understand why).
> 
> Strap on your seatbelts! I hope you folks enjoy this story.
> 
> This fic is going to be angsty. May the Force Be With Us.

The Rogue One squad- or rather, what was left of the team after Scarif- chose not to attend the medal ceremony when the Death Star was destroyed.

Words and whispers of their role in obtaining the Death Star plans spread throughout the Rebellion, certainly, but as they sat around in another room, listening to the whoops and cheers as two other humans and a Wookiee got the credit for taking one huge step to destroying the Empire, their achievements and bravery were all but a faint memory in the back of everyone else’s minds.

“They didn’t even believe us the first time,” Bodhi mumbled, sighing as he rested his chin on his knees whilst curled up on a chair.

“In fairness, the mission was unapproved,” K2 pointed out.

“If it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t have even known there was a weakness to begin with, much less that a weapon that size existed,” Jyn countered. The nonchalance in her voice was betrayed by the hint of frustration of being unheard, unrecognized. But rather than glare at the holo broadcast, she kept herself busy by manipulating her balisong, and the constant _click-clack_ as she spun it around her hand and between her fingers was the only other sound in the room as the others looked on.

“At least we got our revenge,” a cross-armed Baze replied gruffly, though it was easy to tell that even _he_ was displeased at being overlooked.

A gentle (if scarred) hand gripped Baze’s forearm and gave it a comforting squeeze. “All is as the Force wills it,” Chirrut reminded him. “It guided Skywalker to join the Alliance and hand another victory to the Rebellion.”

“ _We_ helped give the Rebellion that victory,” Melshi muttered before taking a swig of something from his flask.

“What matters more is that the victory happened; it doesn’t matter if we get recognized or not,” Cassian finally chimed in as he leaned against the wall opposite everyone else. His arms were crossed, his face neutral, and Jyn paused briefly to stare at him with a hint of incredulity. The frown on his face seemed normal, if a bit disappointed, and his eyebrows scrunched slightly. But there was a sinking feeling in her gut that seemed to tell her that Cassian wasn’t actually upset at their situation, but rather at _them_ , for all the snide reactions. “The point is that everything we do here is for a cause we believe in, even if it means getting overlooked because we weren’t the one to put the nail in the coffin. If the rebellion chooses someone younger and bright-eyed than the rest of us to be praised, then so be it.”

“Even if one of them is an actual smuggler that never follows the rules?”

Cassian’s eyes darkened. “Don’t forget we broke an Imperial-jailed person out of prison to retrieve these plans based on the message delivered by an Imperial defector, _and_ we went rogue on the entire Alliance to get those plans.”

Melshi scoffed and took another drink. “If you’re going to lump us in with that lot on the basis of unexpected heroes then we all should be standing up there with them,” he shot back knowingly, and Jyn could see a twitch in Cassian’s cheek where his jaw tightened slightly.

Jyn went back to flicking her wrist this way and that, the clacking noises quietly resuming from her balisong. She filtered out the rest of the noise, now a dull hum in her mind, until her ears randomly tuned in and heard:

“We were all only in the medbay for one week!” Melshi yelled.

She sensed a loudness that had quieted down now that she became aware of what just transpired. Melshi had stood up to Cassian, his fingers curling and squeezing into fists in an attempt to calm his nerves. Clearly, it wasn’t working too well, and Melshi’s face was turning red with rage.

Cassian merely looked him dead in the eye. His arms were still crossed, but now that the two were standing face to face, their limps were far more apparent.

“They gave us bacta,” Cassian countered. “That’s already more than what operatives normally get when they’re injured. This next group, coming back from their injuries battling the Death Star, they won’t be so lucky. They’ll take longer for recovery. We’ll live.”

“And the rest? The ones that didn’t make it off that beach? Are we going to let everyone else forget who died trying to help us when no one else wanted to?”

That gave Cassian another reason to twitch, and the corner of his mouth pursed slightly before resuming a neutral position. He took a deep breath and said, “You and I both know that an operative’s survival rate-“

“-is less than 25%,” K2 finished.

Melshi glared daggers at the droid, who was wise enough to cease any further attempts at speech after his reaction.

“There isn’t anything we can do about it. They don’t want to glorify our brand of rebellion, and resources are low. Of course they’ll treat us the way they did- they didn’t even have to patch us up with how badly we defied them.” No longer feeling interested in watching the festivities from afar, much less arguing with Melshi to talk him through his anger, he walked away, roughly bumping shoulders with Melshi as he passed him.

That caused Melshi to snap, and he fisted Cassian’s jacket sleeve to yank him back and get even closer as he snarled, “Rebellions are _built_ on hope. You said so yourself. Where did that hope go, _Captain_?”

Ever the professional, Cassian’s face remained expressionless, but his voice was clear with conviction as he shot back, “I hoped for us to make it out alive, and we did. We did our job. For me, that’s all that matters. If you’re in this for the glory, you’ve come to the wrong movement.”

Despite the heat and humidity of Yavin IV, the room settled into an unnerving chill, and Bodhi curled up even tighter as Cassian left the room, rubbing his arms in a shiver. K2 started to walk after Cassian, determining that the captain would need the company, but even he couldn’t take two clunking steps before Cassian shouted, “Don’t follow me, Kay!”

The doors of the room slammed shut, and Melshi’s shoulders slumped. Jyn decided it was best for her to go after Cassian instead of the droid, so she hopped up off the table and on her feet- left foot first, then gently on her right, where the bruising still remained. She, too, passed Melshi, and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. With sad eyes, Melshi turned his head and looked at Jyn as if he were asking for forgiveness. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and she could hear the defeat in his voice rip his vitality into small shreds. “We all deserve better.”

The words pricked her heart and she gave a sad smile. “You guys do; _I_ don’t.” She patted his shoulder twice and headed out.

It didn’t take long for Jyn to find Cassian in the maze of halls, somewhere in an area frequented only by technical staff. Given the post-battle celebration and awards ceremony, it was only natural he’d be alone until Jyn approached him. Her steps were quiet and cautious, like approaching a tooka cat with its hairs on end, ready to bolt at the slightest hint of confrontation. Cassian didn’t need to look up from the wall he leaned on to know that he sensed her presence, and Jyn eventually gave up trying to be sneaky and resumed her natural pace as she closed the gap between them a bit more.

“You shouldn’t have talked down on Melshi like that, not when you of all people convinced him to join us at Scarif,” she told him. “If it weren’t for Bodhi’s message, none of you would’ve found out about the weapon. The Rebellion has him to thank, and what little is left of the crew for being successful in getting the plans out. You have no right to be mad at the rest of us for wanting to recognition, because we were _right_ , and they refused to sanction the mission.”

Getting the words out in one go lifted the weight from her shoulders, and she suddenly felt lighter for it. It was a relief.

She looked at him in hopes that he at least understood her frustration with the whole debacle, and with the Alliance in general, but while Cassian didn’t respond outright, his jaw tightened. She glanced at how his fingers thrummed against his crossed arms, and decided that his display of annoyance and impatience was a clear sign that he wasn’t up for hearing her out. But there was no way she was going to stick around like this after giving her two credits on the matter without a response in return, so she turned on her heels and started to walk away.

“You could’ve died,” she heard him say.

Jyn paused in her tracks but refused to turn back and look at him. “I was convinced you were dead,” she countered. Her weight still shifted forward, ready to keep walking.

“If I missed my shot, even by just a little, you would’ve died at an Imperial’s hands.”

“I know.”

“All they gave you was a week in the medbay and a quick dip in bacta.”

She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

Jyn felt a slight rustle from her shirt at the small of her back. “For once, I was angry at them all,” he admitted quietly.

He didn’t need to say who he was referring to- the faces of those that doubted her flashed in her mind. Draven’s in particular burned the brightest in her memory with the way he looked at her when he ultimately decided not to trust her; it didn’t matter anymore that they needed her to even move forward with finding Bodhi through Saw.

Jyn tensed slightly. “Why?”

His voice was closer now, his breath blowing against her hair slightly and tickling her ears. “You deserved far more than that for what you did for a cause that doubted you.”

She tried to shrug it off. “A deal’s a deal, though- you get me out of that hellhole, I get you to Saw. The rest was just…” she tried to search for the words, but the sound of his controlled breathing was starting to distract her now that she was aware of just how close he was to her. “…a bonus.”

The back of his hand brushed tentatively against hers, and she finally turned around to look at him. Jyn was surprised to see the look of hurt scrawled clearly all over his face, the emotions surfacing from the cracks and crinkles of the edges his eyes, the lines on the corners of his lips, and the no-longer empty space between his eyebrows. It was such a disarming look that she almost lost her footing and was taken aback by it. Putting more weight on her better leg, she straightened up as much as her aching body would let her.

“Because of it, you almost died,” he said, his sad eyes now searching hers.

She stared back defiantly. “It’s like you said- we all still made it out alive.”

“I know!” he burst out, but he extinguished the fire in him just as quickly as the words left his lips.

It dawned on Jyn that when he dismissed Melshi with a “We’re alive, and that’s all that matters”, it wasn’t because he felt that the others were ungrateful after what happened in Scarif; he was trying to tell _himself_ that. His flash of anger carried the shame of feeling selfish, suppressing a desire he felt he shouldn’t have because he spent so many years of his life trying to live and fight for the benefit of others.

For once, she could see him fighting with himself, torn between the happiness and satisfcation of others and that of his own.

As he found his calm again, she suddenly found it harder to breathe. The hallway they stood in became even stuffier than it already was- or, perhaps it was thickened by Cassian breathing on her, and she could feel the ebb and flow of his own breath on her lower lip as she looked up at him.

Though, come to think of it, when did Cassian get this close to her?

Jyn could feel her heart starting to race, and she thought back to the last time she felt like this, but her head was starting to spin to the point where she had a hard time remembering exactly _when_ she felt this way. Perhaps she hadn’t felt this way, ever.

Cassian closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose before staring again with an intensity that gently reminded her that this feeling, this heart-racing closeness, this blatant (but welcome) disregard for personal space, occurred just over a week ago, when the lights of the elevator on Scarif scanned rhythmically past them. She remembered how their faces were so, _so_ close that their lips could brush against each other’s. She lamented not kissing him when she had the chance back then, however, but perhaps, maybe _this time_ , with how much close they were becoming now, she could try and-

“Why do you care so much?” she barely managed to get out, but a part of her already knew the answer, and she was no longer sure if it was getting harder to breathe because of the humid Yavin air or the tension choking her.

“Because it’s you,” he said, and for once his voice wasn’t neutral, as Jyn had grown accustomed to since they first met, but caring, if a bit frustrated.

Cassian didn’t just care about their situation, he _cared._ About _her_. It definitely wasn’t the heat anymore, but the blush spreading throughout her face that made her warm enough to sweat. Her eyes fluttered nervously as she saw his hands appear within the corners of her vision to brush aside the bangs on both sides of her face before caressing her cheeks. Still shocked at his confession and unable to come up with a coherent response, she cupped her hands over his and squeezed gently as she continued to look up at him.

 _How did it come to this?_ Why _does he feel this way? Since when…?_

Jyn wanted so badly to ask him these questions, but she still couldn’t calm down enough to do so. He seemed to understand her confusion, however, because in the midst of her head clouding up and going fuzzy she heard his voice echo vaguely in a tone so soft it was barely above a whisper, “Top of the tower.”

She doesn’t recall her lips parting slightly, but as she felt Cassian’s lower lip fit neatly between them, she found it hard to keep berating herself for being so easily stunned into frozen silence, so she simply gave up and closed her eyes to indulge in the full force of his kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

From a rebel’s perspective (and the Empire’s, Jyn thought wryly), six standard months was quite a long time for the Empire to find the location of their primary base on Yavin IV since the Death Star’s destruction. But for Jyn specifically, six months wasn’t nearly enough. Despite being sent out on several assignments, both off-planet and locally, with Cassian and without Cassian, Jyn fell into a routine for once in her life, and that kind of uninterrupted routine gave her peace. The fighting was inevitable; she stopped trying to tell herself it would someday get any better than that. What she enjoyed most was the calm that was found during her time at Base One in between the missions, in between her comrades in Rogue One whilst eating the gloop of the day, and even in between the sheets with her legs tangled up with Cassian’s.

But then Corporal Prennert sent a comms to Base One one day to report the sighting of a hoard of ships suddenly appearing over Yavin IV. Except-

“Those ships aren’t ours,” Chirrut said suddenly, his head snapping up from his lunch, and without another word, he stood up and placed a hand on Baze’s shoulder.

Baze took a drink of water to swallow the rest of his food and looked up at him inquisitively. He wasn’t the only one looking at Chirrut- Jyn, Bodhi, Cassian, Melshi, and even K2 looked at him, confused. They were indoors- what in the world could the blind Guardian be referring to? The words this time were far more cryptic than was characteristic of him, and the frown lines etching deeper into his face made things even more worrisome.

“What are you talking about, Chirrut?” Baze finally asked.

“We need to go,” Chirrut said, and there was something about his voice- blunt, but kind, patient and soothing, but panicked all at once- that made the hairs on Jyn’s neck stand on end.

“Why?”

His eyes darkened as he said: “The Imperial flag seeks to reign across the galaxy. They’re here.”

 

The evacuation protocol was organized chaos. Everyone had a role and a place to go. Despite the threat of the Empire coming ever closer since they dropped out of hyperspace, droids and sentient creatures alike moved swiftly to carry out their assigned tasks. Cargo was being loaded onto transport ships, patients from the medbay were being hoisted onto their own shuttles, and fighter pilots- including the poster-boy Skywalker- were getting ready to engage in battle to buy time. People shuffled around Jyn, and as she walked from one end of the hangar to the other, the river rush of sentients circumvented her, a smoothed stone in the riverbed. Time was running out for the rebels, but in her desire to take in the gravity of the situation while also remaining calm, her mind seemed to stretch out the seconds much longer than what was standard.

It seemed to speed right back up, however, when she made it to her quarters and found Cassian inside, shuffling around and looking through the nooks and crannies to check for any missing items. She glanced at her bed and noticed that Cassian had already taken out her emergency pack, ever-prepared with her own change of clothes, toiletries, rations, and weapons.

“I’ve been given an assignment,” Cassian said without so much as a greeting, or even bothering to look up at her as he continued to look through all the shelves and closets to make sure every square inch of her quarters was clear of anything the Empire could use for themselves (assuming they decided to merely raid the base rather than destroy it outright).

Jyn wanted to go with him. She wanted to make sure that they left together so that they could watch each other survive. But if things go wrong and they don’t make it…

She swallowed, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t die down as she watched him continue to search her quarters. She clenched her jaw a bit tightly as she grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulder.

“Ah,” Cassian said suddenly, and he pulled her signature gunmetal scarf out of her closet. “Forgot to put this in your pack.” He walked over to put the scarf around her neck, finally looking into her eyes.

It dawned on her that he refused to look at her for so long not because he was in a rush or didn’t want to talk to her, but because he found it hard to even do so. His lips remained neutral but there was a subtle outward sloping of his eyebrows and his were widened slightly; the worry and panic was affecting him so much that Jyn was sure he knew there was only so much he could do to try and hide it. And yet he tried anyway.

He wasn’t the only one feeling overwhelmed by the fact that the Empire was back for them again. They’d been through this before, together, when they were sure they were going to die. They swore, since then, that they’d never let it happen to the survivors of Scarif, not like this.

Today was a test to see if they could all keep their word.

She gathered her strength and finally spoke. “I was given orders to assist with a temp relocation with the Alliance High Command. We leave in 30.”

Cassian nodded before pressing his forehead against hers. It was a familiar gesture, one that gave them both comfort, but Jyn couldn’t find it in her to feel it this time. She took his hands and brought them up to her face to cup her cheeks in hopes that the comfort would return, but instead she found herself inhaling just as sharply as he sighed when she realized that she, too, was far too high-strung to revel in the affectionate gesture.

He pressed his forehead a little harder against hers as he said, “Melshi and I have to lead an extraction in Imperial territory.”

The words punched the breath right out of her.

She kept her composure, however, and gave a single nod anyway. This evacuation was probably safer for Cassian in the long-run, she reasoned; they’ve been on assignments apart from each other before. The fact that an Imperial fleet was on its way is nothing compared to what they’ve experienced. They survived the Battle of Scarif, and the Battle of Yavin; they’ll survive this one.

Jyn and Cassian walked towards the hangar, their pinkies linked and packs in hand, ready to leave the planet for good. Jyn looked rather distracted and her eyes were glazed over as she made calculations in her head. Cassian didn’t make it clear as to which planet he had to go to. Then again, she wasn’t given information about where she and the rest of the Alliance High Command would evacuate. There was a balance in the information withheld from them.

 _It’s just an extraction. Just an extraction_ , she told herself repeatedly, trying to soothe the nerves firing through her system. Cassian must have sensed it, because his pinky gingerly squeezed hers, and when she turned to look up at him in response, he smiled warmly. It wasn’t going to fool Jyn, however- the smile wasn’t quite as warm as she remembered, and his eyes didn’t quite crinkle at the edges in the same way. He was just as nervous as she was.

They slowed to a stop in the middle of the bustling crowd as they arrived at the ramp to Cassian’s ship. Melshi leaned against the doorframe, already suited up and ready to disembark. He looked at Cassian expectantly, his fingers thrumming his crossed arms. Melshi looked at Jyn and gave her a curt nod, which she returned, but even she could sense the nervous energy in his arm-rapping, and she didn’t feel any better about their separation.

Cassian let go of Jyn’s pinky and put his hands on her shoulders to spin her to face him. His lips were pursed and he stared at her intently, as though he wanted to say something, but couldn’t find it in him to get it out. She could sense his nervous energy, and it made her heart beat so hard it threatened to tear through her chest.

“I…” he started, but he choked on whatever syllable he was going to get out next and his lips re-sealed themselves.

A moment had passed.

“Jyn, I-“ Cassian tried again, but his mouth remained frozen in its slightly agape shape. It was only then, as his eyes scanned hers, moving back and forth to study the features on her face, that she realized-

 _No_.

It wasn’t just something _random_ he wanted to tell her. There was a possibility, an incredibly _strong_ possibility, that he wanted to tell her something she hadn’t heard from anyone since she was 8 and her father embraced her one last time on Lah’mu.

In all honesty, he didn’t even need to tell her outright. She could feel it in his grip on her shoulders- warm, firm, and vulnerable all at once. It started to read clearly in his eyes, too; the fear was there, the worry that things might go wrong while they were apart, desperate and wanting to say something so that they could leave on a fond note while also avoiding a sense of finality in their parting of ways. The mere inkling that Jyn had at what Cassian might have to tell her made her whole body heat up in a way that Yavin IV’s weather never could. And as much as one could rationalize and dismiss it as a three-worded sentence, Jyn wasn’t sure she could handle hearing it, not when they were about to part ways for an indeterminable amount of time.

Another moment had passed, but he was still unable to find the words he wanted to say, so he instead resigned himself to cupping her face with his hands to press a soft kiss to her lips. Jyn instinctively raised herself on her tip-toes and let that tender moment silence the noise around her and lift her spirits high enough that she could fly.

The moment went as quickly as it came, however, and as she sank back down to her heels and the noise around them resumed, Cassian’s expression quickly reverted back to that feigned sense of calm from earlier, when they were in her quarters.

“We’ll see each other again soon,” he told her, but Jyn knew that they both knew that wasn’t what he truly wanted to say. She knew that Cassian wouldn’t readily admit it, but these words were intended more for self-assurance than it was to ease her tension.

Now it was her turn to put up a front. She smiled brightly at him, letting her eyes squint and do the comforting for once. She gave him a reassuring nod, still more for Cassian’s benefit than her own, and repeated his words softly like a secret meant only for the two of them: “We _will_ see each other again.” Jyn had absolute faith in that. There wasn’t a choice- she _had_ to trust in the idea. She had to have _hope_.

The words seemed to have worked, and Cassian’s smile was genuine again.

Out ahead, Melshi cleared his throat. “Captain, we need to head out!” he called out, and Cassian averted his gaze to look at Melshi and answer back with a curt nod.

 _Just get the words out_ , Jyn thought, _Let me hear the words, Cassian._

_But…_

On second thought, if he said it here and now, without warning, while an Imperial fleet was closing in on their location, would it be genuine? Would his words be just a product of panic? They were all fleeing for safety. She could just wait until after the evacuation, when Cassian returned to the new base from his extraction. It was a good idea- it bought her time to think about how she really felt about him. They’d only really been together since shortly after Scarif, and the build-up was slow; did she even feel that way about him after such a short amount of time?

She suddenly felt a jerk in her shoulders and her train of thought came to an abrupt stop as Cassian gripped Jyn by the shoulders one more time and gazed into her eyes. He licked his lips, readying himself to say what she suspected he wanted to say, and the flicker of his tongue made her lips part slightly in response.

"Jyn, I..." he said again, but no matter how hard he wanted to get the words out, they stayed stuck in his throat, caught and snagged at his Adam's Apple, and Jyn was left staring up at him in a mix of expectation, mild hope, and utter confusion.

"...will see you when I get back."

Jyn felt deflated for the second time that day. She nodded anyway- neither of them were particularly good with words, most especially in big moments like this felt. "Yeah." She cleared her throat and reset her facial expression, hoping that he didn’t catch the disappointment painted clearly across her face for just a split second.

Her shoulders felt cold and defenseless as Cassian let go of her to board the ship.

 _It’s just a quick extraction mission_ , she reasoned.

 _But_ , another part of her whispered, _Just in case…_

“Wait!” she called out, and Cassian seemed just a bit too eager to pause and turn back around.

She jogged up the ramp after him and met him at the top as Melshi settled in to the pilot’s seat. Hastily, she unwrapped her scarf from her neck and draped it loosely around Cassian’s, fixing it so that the frayed edges were level with each other. Once she was satisfied with her handiwork, she stepped back to admire the aesthetic.

It was quite the aesthetic, alright- the scarf didn’t particularly match Cassian’s parka, and made his shoulder area so bulky his neck completely disappeared. The shade of blue was different from her shade of grey, but Jyn bit back a giggle at the thought that it very much was like Cassian to travel with enough layers of clothing that the only thing left exposed would be his eyes (before he’d put goggles on, of course).

She could see the tips of his ears redden, and she beamed the fact that he knew she was making as grand a gesture as she could without saying anything. What she hadn’t expected, however, was for Cassian to remove his parka and swung it around her to rest it on her own shoulders.

“Take care of my parka, then,” he said in a hushed tone, and Jyn noticed that his hands felt even heavier on her shoulders as he let go of what was essentially his version of a security blanket. The coat and the gesture combined with the weather warmed her up to a sweat by now, but she’d give just about anything to get him to hug her tightly and never leave, wrapped up in everything _him_.

But this was going to become a war zone again very soon, and if she didn’t leave, they’d be trapped here, they’d perish, they’d never get another chance to be wrapped up in each other. So she gripped his forearms and squeezed them lovingly so he could drop his arms and head out.

"You better come back," she joked, backing away from the ramp and pointing at him good-naturedly. "You're not allowed to die until you bring back my scarf!"

Cassian chuckled. "You're not allowed to die until you return my parka. Good?"

She nodded once more, and for the first time that day, she smiled. "Yeah. Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally [made a gifset](https://sleepykalena.tumblr.com/post/173719281553/tfw-youre-writing-a-rebelcaptain-angst-fic) with this fic in mind, so have some laughs before I get too mean


	3. Chapter 3

The ship she boarded for evacuation was relatively comfortable compared to what she was used to. Though, it was hardly a surprise, given that Mothma was aboard the ship.

Jyn was given the more cramped quarters, however.

It was fine, she reasoned; she wasn’t expected to be traveling for very long, according to Draven’s updates on the matter. She noted he was rather detailed in his report to her about their travels, despite giving her explicit orders not to disclose their potential location to anyone outside the ship. It was a lot of talking, more than she thought Draven was capable of doing in one sitting. She made sure to keep an eye on Draven’s behavior for the rest of this trip and figure out what was making Draven tick.

What she also didn’t expect was to see K-2SO next to her bunk.

“Why aren’t you with Cassian?” she asked, setting her pack down on the thin mattress.

“I was given clearance to board this ship for evacuation,” he explained simply, but she noticed his optics were looking a bit shifty, analyzing what was in front of him.

 _She_ was in front of him.

She eyed him incredulously. “And you were instructed to evacuate with us because…?”

“I promised I’d be there for you, Jyn.”

It was a kind gesture from the droid, until-

“Cassian said I had to.”

 _There it was_.

Jyn couldn’t help but chuckle at that, so she shook her head and knocked on his chassis before heading up to check out the rest of the ship.

Apart from K2, it seemed that she was the only member of the Rogue One squad onboard with the Alliance High Command. It was strange, actually, to be around them all. Despite having already served 6 months in the Rebellion, she still felt uncomfortable around all these sentients. It was so much easier to interact with the ensigns, the pilots, the “boots on the ground” folks, as it were. Now that she was surrounded by the key players, the ones more likely to be delegates and strategists moving the dejarik pieces than being the pieces themselves, she felt an unsettling feeling in the pit of her stomach. The last time she was surrounded by so many of them was when they collectively turned the other cheek as she pleaded with them to send their best fighters to Scarif.

They tried to talk to her amicably; she would be stopped every now and again and hear words of gratitude. “Thank you for your service and sacrifice,” they’d tell her. “You’ve done a good thing,” others would say.

She noted bitterly that not a single one of them said anything remotely close to an apology for not trusting her in the first place.

The bitter taste in her mouth hadn’t completely gone away, it seemed.

The more she was pulled aside to be thanked, the number she felt. The construction of their words was strong, but the impact was weak. _Words, words, words,_ she thought. _They were only words._ And yet, not a single one of them carried a hint of remorse. No remorse for the numbers lost for the people that followed her to her death. No remorse for their ignorance. No remorse for their cowardice.

The last straw was when a tall, caped man stopped her. He wore a pale grey outfit with a waist belt and sported a modest, equally grey beard. She remembered his face, but never bothered to remember his name after she filed him away as being a coward during her hearing before she went rogue and headed for Scarif. He clearly decided to remember hers, though.

“Jyn Erso,” he said warmly with slightly open arms. He either forgot that he’d talked down on her back then, or was trying to distract from the fact that he’d done so. She decided to let him maintain the charade; hopefully if he was brief enough she wouldn’t find herself at the edge of her patience.

“That’s me,” she replied cautiously.

“You’re one of the bravest in the Rebellion, without a doubt,” he went on. “Without your efforts, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Evacuating because the Empire is chasing after us?”

He chuckled. “Of course, we are in the midst of a rather unfortunate situation after having made so much progress with our efforts. But in the grand scheme of things, we cannot afford to be cowards. We must pick up and carry on in order to properly honor the loss of Bail Organa and all the Alderaanian who’ve perished.” He then tightened a fist in front of her in a show of strength and vigor. “The Empire is foolish if they think they can finish us off! We are not cowards, after all.”

_A “Death Star”- this is nonsense!_

_Don’t forget about the_ Imperial _pilot!_

_I say the Rebellion is finished!_

Jyn thought she forgot what he said- the whole council meeting before Scarif was such a blur and happened so quickly- so it surprised her when it all came calling back to her with such clarity. She remembered how badly the words stung her and how he practically sneered at her and Bodhi at their attempts to help the Alliance and her hands balled into fists in reaction, but they weren’t visible through the sleeves of Cassian’s parka. She wished he were around to talk her out of punching the man, or at least intervene and sweet-talk him enough to excuse themselves gracefully. But she was on her own for the time being, and the last of her self-restraint was stripped away as his words continued to bounce about and echo in her mind, all without even a faint acknowledgement of his hypocrisy.

She glowered and bared her teeth. “You were the one who said that the Rebellion was finished before I even left to get the plans off Scarif,” she reminded him acidly. “Sounded an awful lot like coward’s talk back then, if you ask me.”

The man was taken aback, but only for the briefest of moments before his face morphed and looked incensed, and he inhaled deeply to puff his chest with indignation. Behind her, she could hear the clanking footsteps of K2, which paused as he stood directly behind her. There was a slight whir in his joints, followed by a, “She’s right, you know. After having done a preliminary sweep of the sentients on board, I estimate that about 81% of those aboard this ship are cowards by your definition. I would like an explanation as to why this ship is said to carry important beings when they are, in fact, cowards.”

The man found himself flustered and speechless.

Despite her small stature, almost comically emphasized from wearing Cassian’s oversized parka, Jyn made no effort to hide her physical strength as she bumped her shoulder against the man’s arm with more force than he was accustomed to (not that it was much to begin with, she surmised), and ended the conversation by walking away. As K2 caught up with her and they moved to another section of the ship, she held up her fist at shoulder level, her arm slightly outstretched.

“Jyn, what are you doing?” he asked.

“It’s called a fistbump,” she said, not stopping her stride. “It’s a version of a highfive.”

“I see…but why are you offering one?”

“For backing me up. For...for being there for me.”

There was a bit of silence and a moment of hesitation before she felt his cool metal fingers tap against her own.

She grabbed a few things from the food court, mostly for her pack (treats were always nice to have with rations for long missions), and a few more things to nibble on, stuffing them in Cassian’s many pockets before circling back to her assigned quarters.

“Do you know how long Cassian is expected to be gone?” she decided to ask K2 as she hung Cassian’s parka at the closet’s coat hanger.

“Negative; Cassian hadn’t given me information about that,” he responded. There was a pause, however, and K2’s optics turned yellow and flickered for a few moments before they returned to their default, cool-white color. “All accessible databases do not contain any information on where Cassian is headed, how long the mission is expected to take, or even instructions about where he needs to meet with Draven once the extraction is complete.”

“That’s far less information than most other missions he’s assigned to,” she noted with her arms crossed.

“Indeed- I’m inclined to think that the destruction of the Death Star has caused concern for the Alliance with regards to how much information is disseminated to those who lack the clearance to know.” K2 commented.

Jyn sighed. She was probably overthinking things. _It’s just an extraction,_ she told herself again. _You won’t be wearing this parka for very long._ _You’ll see each other again soon._ _It was just a matter of the mind_ , she thought- surely, an evacuation coupled by the news of an extraction mission deep in Imperial territory is just a juxtaposition of dangerous events, an unfortunate coincidence that rattled her nerves. She shook her head of the thoughts. She was tougher, no, _better_ than this. She cared for Cassian, sure, but he didn’t mean _that_ much to her that he occupied her thoughts in every waking hour of her life. They enjoyed each other’s presence more than was considered friendly, but they weren’t joined at the hip. It’d only been six months, after all.

She loosened and kicked off her boots, aiming them so that they landed on her pack in a single pile, before raiding the drawers to locate the sleeping clothes. Once K2 had left her quarters to stand watch and give her privacy, she’d changed outfits before falling back onto her bunk to take a nap.

It wasn’t long before she sat back up.

Her bunk was meant for a single person but it somehow felt way too large, way too empty, and way too cold. She scanned the room for an extra blanket, but couldn’t find any place where an extra one would be stashed. She then looked at Cassian’s parka hanging off the closet, and part of her started to wonder if she really _was_ cold. Perhaps she wasn’t. Perhaps she couldn’t sleep because it was a new environment and she needed to adjust to her surroundings. Perhaps it was insomnia kicking in again. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t sure how long it would take for her bunk to have a second occupant-

She quickly berated herself for letting her thoughts wander like that. _I need to sleep_ , she thought rather desperately, thinking back to her meeting with Draven early in the morning (or rather, “early” according to Yavin IV local time, which the ship still ran on). So she got up and grabbed Cassian’s coat, intending to use its bulkiness as an additional blanket.

Jyn slipped her arms through the holes and let the fur-lined hood weigh against her back like a hug from behind. Her mind wandered just a bit, reminiscing about the warmth from Cassian’s chest whenever he pulled her close and pressed his body against hers, as she took her steps from the closet back to the bed and laid back down with a plop. The fabric embraced her front, and as it settled onto her chest and her head fit into the hood, she caught a whiff of familiar memories: arms curling around her waist as she drifted off to sleep; legs intertwining and feet smoothing over each other; soft sighs in the half-awake hours of the morning; the gentle, unconscious press of lips on her head…

It was a whiff of Cassian.

As she breathed in deeply to fully take in the scent, she began to wonder vaguely if Cassian meant more to her than she originally thought. But before she could think more on it, her eyelids grew heavy. She took in one more deep breath to indulge in the aroma of fond memories, and the smell was sweet enough to lull her to a calm sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might actually split chapter 4 into two- I'm about 1/3rd of the way in and it's already nearing 3k words? I don't want to throw a 9-10k chapter at you when I'm trying to pack so much into it, so we'll see. hopefully I can continue these weekly updates, though!
> 
> I'm still on a bit of a tumblr hiatus, but I respond to all DMs so [hit me up if you wanna](sleepykalena.tumblr.com/)!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was posted without my usual "2nd and 3rd look-over", so I'm sure there will be some mistakes here that i'll have to go back and edit later. Sorry about that!
> 
> I also had to split this portion of the story into two chapters after all; chapter 5 will be the last of the happy times before we hit up angstville for a chunk of it, so get ready, y'all (but hopefully it won't be too bad).

Jyn was never a fan of being told to stay still.

Staying still made you frozen in midair, a convenient plate dangled in front of someone aiming to shoot you for target practice. It took a herculean amount of effort not to snap back at Draven when she met with him the next morning and was informed that she was not to leave Thila once they landed on the planet to establish what was meant to be a temporary headquarters while others searched for a more permanent base for future operations.

“I don’t think you need to be reminded of what could possibly happen if you decide to ‘go rogue’ on us, as it were, as your image and identity have been circulating the galaxy as a fugitive and a highly dangerous person,” Draven said with dark eyes.

Jyn found it more comforting to keep wearing Cassian’s parka the next day, and his sleeve brushed softly against her cheek, allowing her to take in a hint of his scent again as she moved a stray set of hair behind her ear. She nodded brusquely at him from across the table, trying to keep her face as neutral as possible despite noting dryly at how wide this table was even though Mon Mothma, Admiral Ackbar, and Princess Leia being the only other attendees in this meeting.

“Any questions?” Draven asked thereafter.

“How is Cassian?” she asked simply.

Silence.

Then, “ _Captain Andor_ ’s activity and whereabouts are purely on a need-to-know basis. You do not need to know, and therefore do not have the clearance,” he finished.

She concluded that Draven chose this this table to sit at to make it difficult for her to reach over and grab him by the collar.

“If all the surviving members of Rogue One are to be grounded at Thila for our ‘protection’,” she said, curling her fingers spitefully at the word despite being buried in the puffy sleeves, “Then why are Kay and I the only ones aboard this ship?” Her tone was less curious than it was challenging, and Draven glowered at her relentless displays of defiance, no matter how small they were.

Jyn was riding on a pretty high falthier up until she noticed Draven’s eyes soften slightly and a frown twitched at the corners of his mouth before responding in a rather tight-lipped manner: “Despite our intense loss of resources, Captain Andor specifically requested the Rogue One squad to be evacuated with High Command for security. But because of limited space on the ship, and the nature of who’s onboard, we couldn’t allow anyone else in.”

_Did that mean-?_

“Captain Andor managed to find a way to call in a favor, because there was, somehow, enough space for one additional sentient.”

_Cassian called in a favor to make sure you were safe._

_You’re only onboard because of him._

He knew exactly what would’ve happened, and managed to get someone to agree to honoring his request. Just her and K2. She would’ve been fine evacuating with the others as a group, but Cassian wouldn’t take an all-or-nothing option, and chose her safety over the others.

All she could do at that point was fiddle with a broken zipper she discovered in Cassian’s parka as she sank in her seat.

 

Thila’s environment was comparable to Yavin IV’s in that it was home to rainforests, but with mountain ranges rather than ziggurats. Either way, it made it easy to hide an Alliance base. The humid, muggy weather made it difficult for Jyn to keep wearing Cassian’s parka once off the ship, and she had no choice but to hang it up in her private quarters while she went about her day. She didn’t like the feeling- she’d worn it as often as she could while the ship was en route to Thila during the evacuation, and while her shoulders felt a great deal lighter, it filled her with a sense of dread, a feeling of nakedness that made her feel a little _too_ exposed and vulnerable. She didn’t enjoy feeling emotions born out of overthinking; overthinking left the door open for sabotage and attack. She shook her head in hopes that the worries would sift out from her ears, but when they didn’t, she decided to look for Bodhi and the others to see if they were safe.

Jyn didn’t have to worry so much- the other members of Rogue One arrived not long after she and K2 had landed. Bodhi and Baze were unhappy about being “grounded” at Mothma’s orders, but Chirrut decided to take the opportunity to get familiar with his surroundings and resume his duties from back when they were on Yavin.

“You’ll still be hosting meditation sessions?” Jyn asked before taking in a spoonful of gruel for breakfast.

Chirrut nodded, his smile beaming. “The Empire has caused so many atrocities that the Alliance has increased their numbers as a result. But that doesn’t mean that joining will give them the satisfaction or closure they’re looking for.”

“With all this madness happening, you’d think those people would instead choose to stay as neutral as possible and hope they don’t die,” Bodhi chuckled as he tore off a piece of bread and dunked it in his caf.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if they left,” Chirrut responded warmly, and Baze rolled his eyes. “What?” he asked, turning his head slightly towards his partner, looking scandalized. “What matters is that the person can find peace within themselves. Not everyone finds peace within themselves by trying to achieve peace from without. One must be one with the Force, and work tirelessly to find an internal balance.”

“The Force doesn’t help you,” Baze reminded him. “ _I_ help you.”

“And I thank the Force each day that you are there for me when I need it.”

The look on Baze’s face was such a mix of emotions crashing into each other all at once that Jyn had to hide her laughter behind her sip of caf.

 

It dawned on Jyn about two weeks after landing on Thila that she had absolutely nothing to do, and it drove her up the wall. Between settling in and attending debriefs with various members of the Rebellion, it became clear to her that Mothma was going to stay true to her word about keeping all Rogue One members grounded “for safety’s sake”. No one was willing to give her an off-world assignment, no matter how much she demanded one. She was itching to be off-planet, to be traveling, to do something, _anything_ , to get her mind off the slow passage of time while she waited for Cassian to return.

And yet, somehow, the sun still managed to set each day, and she found herself back in her quarters with K2 and the end of them, having done very little with her time.

Jyn fell back on her bunk and let the faint smell of Cassian waft in the air- it’d become a habit to wear the parka in bed since she landed to help her fall asleep. She fiddled with the broken zipper as she continued to scroll and check her on-base messages. So far, no new communications since the last time she checked, which was…

“Jyn, it’s only been 30 standard minutes since you last checked your datapad for messages,” K2 pointed out, and it earned him a glare through the fuzz on the hood.

“I hope you realize that it’s difficult to find you even remotely frightening when you glare at me while wearing oversized clothing,” he continued, and based on the slight flash in his optics Jyn was sure he took a picture of her just then. She noticed since landing on Thila that he’d do that whenever he found something particularly interesting or amusing. Or rather, amusing to _him_. Normally they were at Jyn’s or Bodhi’s expense. She’d punch him for it if his chassis weren’t so fortified from Cassian’s previous upgrades.

“You should be scared of me anyway,” she said as she twisted back to lie on her stomach, scrolling mindlessly on her datapad (not that she was even looking at anything interesting or important). “Always fear the little ones, they say- you never know when they’ll take you by surprise.”

“Ah, yes,” K2 replied dryly, “That would explain why the Empire employs rabbits to do their bidding.”

There was a resounding clunk that echoed her quarters when she chucked her balisong at his head.

Jyn immediately turned her head to her other side, opening her mouth to say “Can you believe the nerve of this droid?” but the only thing next to her was an extra pillow, and-

 _Oh, right_.

Even though she knew Cassian was still away on assignment, her instincts still took over, clearly still forgetting his absence.

Feeling a sting in her chest at the realization, she checked her datapad and tapped on the calendar: three weeks and four standard days have elapsed since she and Cassian parted ways. She gave up and tossed her datapad aside. It was nearing quiet hours- no one she knew would be awake enough to hold a conversation with her even if she reached out to them. The sooner she forced herself to sleep the better, she reasoned, and resigned herself to pull the covers up and curl her legs in so the parka could sheathe as much of her as possible.

“Turning in for the night?” K2 asked with a head tilt.

Jyn could only nod- she didn’t want her voice to croak just from a simple verbal confirmation.

“Very well, then- I’ll stand outside the door if you need me,” the droid concluded, already turning to walk out of her quarters. As the doors slid shut to leave her in the darkness, she could vaguely hear him mutter something to the effect of, “At least _I_ still have energy; I don’t even _need_ sleep.”

She may have called it lights out, but it was hard to fall asleep. The rattling hum of the ventilation system in her quarters was delightful white noise compared to the thoughts buzzing in her mind. Forget buzzing- they were practically _screaming_ at her. With the bunk still feeling rather empty and having done so little with her day, the doubts and fears pegged her one by one, threatening to stick to the walls of her morale and weigh her down.

It was just...hard to quiet her mind. She wasn’t sure where Cassian was, how far away he was, if he was even safe, how deep he was in Imperial territory, and-

Things were a lot easier when she had so much to do that her body wouldn’t let her stay up long enough to entertain these thoughts. She was just overthinking things, surely, now that her mind was occupied with very little since she was grounded with the rest of the squad.

 _Stop this_ , she berated herself, _It’s just an extraction, it’s just another mission, he’ll be back safely, he’s the Fulcrum, one of the Alliance’s best, what’s to worry about, anyway…?_

She started fiddling with the broken zipper on Cassian’s parka again, but the kriffing thing was so broken that it wouldn’t smoothly zip up all the way like one would expect of a standard zipper. It grinded harshly against the teeth, and the sound and feel of it was starting to grate against the back of her mind, the movement just as jagged and interrupted as her thoughts and fears.

Irritated and helpless, she buried her face in the pillow and groaned.

There was a knock on the door. "Jyn?"

She twisted around to face the door blew the fur of the parka hood away from her nose. "Yeah, Kay?"

"I've noticed it's been an hour since you turned off the lights and said you'd go to bed, but I can't help but think that you're still awake."

There was no malice in his voice, but Jyn couldn't help but glare at the door. "...No. I'm just sleep-talking."

"Ah, just as well, then, carry on," K2 responded, and there was a faint whir followed by a clunk as he readjusted back to his default position of standing guard at the door.

Sighing, she laid back down and curled up in Cassian's parka and carded her hair. It’d been a while since she cut it, she realized. She brought a section of her hair forward and tugged on a small clump of it, letting the soft strands slip between her index finger and thumb. She continued to tug and pull gently at her hair like this, and she felt a familiar sensation that took her back to her childhood.

She couldn’t remember the last time she braided her hair, what with it being so short it didn’t really matter, but these days, with how long it’s gotten, she couldn’t help but remember her father- _Papa_ \- braiding her hair for bed every night, whilst her mother braided it anew in the morning. As she got older through the years, she had followed with her family tradition by forgoing the braids when she reached adulthood in favor of her signature, tightly-wound bun. She knew it was futile to do so, but if she couldn’t have Cassian around to comfort her in times of high stress, she would’ve traded the whole galaxy to be with her parents again, in that comfort and domesticity she was forced to leave behind on Lah’mu.

“Kay?” she called out.

There was a pause which was soon interrupted by more whirring as he shuffled around. “Yes?”

She rolled her eyes- he could’ve come in at this point, and yet he was still standing outside. “Could you come in for a moment?”

K2’s hesitation to enter the room was easily readable despite the heavy metal door. “Are you decent?”

“ _You_ never are,” she retorted.

Luckily the droid understood this to be Jyn-speak for “Yes, you dolt, why would you ever assume I’d invite you in while in an indecent state?” and punched in the door code.

She sat up as the lights from the hallway illuminated her and she craned her head to look up at K2’s halo-lit optics, which adjusted for the darkness of Jyn’s quarters.

Jyn cleared her throat, still in disbelief that she was about to ask the question. “Do you know anything about braiding hair?”

K2 made a gesture of scratching his head. “I don’t recall ever having the hair to justify having the knowledge for it.”

“Kay,” she replied sternly.

“…I can use the network to research braid styles suitable for sleep.”

“If that’s alright, yes. Something simple.”

“You want to braid your hair,” K2 said matter-of-factly.

She shrugged. “It gets tangled in my sleep.”

“You have other reasons to ask for this,” he said, refusing to beat around the bush.

She sighed at his relentless observations. He started conducting his search anyway.

As much as she didn’t want to admit it, K2’s conclusions were nudging just a bit too close to home than she was comfortable with; the sooner he finished his research, the better. There was a very faint scratching noise, less like static and more like crackles in a warm firepit, as he continued to parse through the holonet to get the information requested. But after a few minutes of K2 pondering, Jyn started to wonder just how many planets actually had hair-braiding traditions, and how many species even engaged in such practices.

Then, “Which braiding ritual would you prefer I discuss: Grange, Aria Prime, Vallt, or Lah’mu?”

Jyn tilted her head and furrowed her eyebrows in confusion.

“In order to get the information I need in the most efficient way possible, I am providing you with options from locations that your parents have been to for a significant period of time. I suspect that one of these is the basis for having your hair braided because they are, as you sentients say, ‘close to home’.”

She gave it some thought. They didn’t spend much time on Lah’mu (not that the population was huge or anything), so she crossed that off the list. She _was_ born on Vallt, however…

“I think my parents lived in Vallt long enough to pick up some traditions. Maybe hair braiding is one of them?” Jyn finally answered.

There was a flicker in K2’s eyes- was that a smile? Was he… _beaming_?

“Understood. Please turn your back towards me, Jyn, and I shall get started.”

She turned her back towards him, sitting cross-legged on her bunk as K2 kneeled at her bedside to start gathering her hair. In a knee-jerk reaction, she reached over her shoulder to offer K2 her hair elastic, which he yanked off her hand rather aggressively. She hissed and brought her hand back to her chest to nurse the pain away, and for a brief moment she wondered if she was making a huge mistake in asking him to braid her hair. But there was no way for her to do it herself- she never learned how to braid, nor did she have any dolls to practice on. Between her wampa plush and Stormy, there wasn’t much for her in the way of pretty women dolls like she’d seen on the storefronts in Coruscant. Not that it mattered to young Jyn at the time; she never saw a use for dolls meant to be groomed and sat upon a shelf.

This was probably the only time in her entire life she actually regretted not owning one.

Jyn braced herself for some ugly, painful hair yanking at the hands of a droid who delicate in absolutely no sense of the word.

Instead, she felt a cool, smooth sensation run from the top of her skull, down the center, and to the nape as the right half of her hair was pushed over her right shoulder. The pressure was firm, but still gentle. She felt K2’s finger repeat the motion, tracing down her skull a little more to the left as he gathered more hair. On and on he went, accumulating set after set of strands, the feeling so soothing and pleasant that she closed her eyes and, for once, selfishly basked in the memory of her Papa getting her ready for bed, and the droning hum of the ventilation system morphing instead to the low, gentle rumbling of the dishwasher in the kitchen. The memories flooded in so bittersweetly that hot tears threatened to stream down her face, and she forced herself to bite down on her lip to maintain composure.

K2 paused when Jyn sucked in her breath in a shudder, and she clutched on to her mother’s kyber necklace in desperation. Now that her stolen childhood had come back so vividly, she remembered the shape of her mother crumbling to the ground at the hands of the man in white and it left her feeling so raw and open that she prayed to her necklace in hopes that K2 would just ignore her and continue braiding her hair.

She felt her hair fall back down to feather across her back, however, and her eyes squeezed shut, ready to hear K2 confront her about her strange reaction.

The moment never came.

“My apologies, I had chosen the wrong type of braid,” he said cautiously. “Much too complicated, meant for formal gatherings. This one, I believe, is a much better choice for sleep…” And with that, K2 reset her hair and started once more, tracing a cool finger down her head again to part her hair at the half, and proceeded to braid.

Jyn wasn’t entirely sure if the alleged mistake was truly such, but she was nonetheless grateful for it.

The braiding didn’t take long, and she could hear the final snap of the hair elastic as K2 finished off the other braid as he stood back up.

“Thanks, Kay,” she said quietly, finally feeling drowsy.

K2 started to lumber back out into the hallway. “Sleep well, Jyn. You organic sentients are terrible beings without it.”

Jyn couldn’t help but chuckle at the annoying truth in his words, and she once again laid back down on the bed, head (now neatly) burrowed in the hood of Cassian’s parka, the sheets tangled at her feet, and the puffy sleeves covering her up to the tips of her fingers as she curled up into a more restful sleep.

 

Morning came just a bit too soon when K2 entered her quarters without a knock and said, "Jyn, your datapad rang while you were asleep; it might be a message."

Jyn picked up her datapad that dropped down to the ground. As she turned the screen on to check her notifications, she rubbed her eye of dust and let the parka slump lazily off her shoulder. She had to read the line over twice, even three times, but her heart nearly skipped a beat as she read:

 

> See me after breakfast.
> 
> \- GEN D

 

"Hopefully it's something good?" K2 asked, his towering figure casting a shadow over her message.

She looked up at him a bit warily from her datapad, however- there was something about this turn of events that seemed just a bit _too_ convenient. She'd been denied an active role in helping the Alliance, and now suddenly she's going to be given an assignment (from _Draven_ , no less...)? Coupled by the fact that K2 told her to check her datapad for messages in a manner of speech that played back just a little too quickly and a little too high-pitched, it all just seemed-

 _Curious_ , she thought.

"You were awfully eager for me to check my datapad," she responded.

There was a moment of silence, save for the whirring of K2's optics, which darted to and from, analyzing the moment unfolding in front of him. He straightened up subtly before saying, "I'm awfully eager for you to have something to do," he responded, and his vocal modules played his voice back clearly.

The genuineness in his voice was enough for her to get up and head to the fresher, but paused to detour towards the closet to hang Cassian's parka up on a hanger. She buried her face in the back of the parka and took long slow breath inwards, relishing it like a freshly laundered blanket, and patted it in a gesture of farewell before pulling her hair ties out to let the braids loose.

 

"I see you've decided to wear clothing that suits your size," Draven remarked as he sat down on the table across from her. Jyn noted with immense amusement that Draven had continued to use a wide table to keep a distance between them. Could a war-hardened man such as himself really be that scared of a young woman in her mid-20s?

Well, there _were_ far less frightening things in war.

Jyn's hands were folded on her lap as she stared ahead, trying to maintain a steady face and not give away any sort of snark in her expression. It was a bit odd, really, to find herself yet again sitting on a table across from Draven in a darkened room for her first "assignment", lit only by soft green lights displaying information on different boards and screens. The only difference this time is that she had no binders, though it didn't slip past her notice that being officially grounded by Mothma was its own form of house arrest.

Draven’s posture was relaxed, his lower body swiveled away from Jyn while his upper body twisted to face her direction as he looked at the datapad that rested on the table. "Your rap sheet includes 'Forgery of Imperial documents'," he said without so much as a segue into his purpose for calling her over. She noted wryly that this must have been the origin of Cassian’s habit of not always starting the conversation with sufficient context.

She couldn’t hold back her wit any further, though- her patience for his lack of immediate clarity had run out, and she was keen to let that show.

"General Draven," she said loftily, "This isn’t a speed-dating session.” She propped up her hand and rested her chin on it as she gave her most saccharine smile. “You’ve grounded me here until further notice- you can take all the time you need to get to know me and my rap sheet in-depth,” she said, the last syllables so airy that she felt an immense wave of satisfaction when he rolled his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Cut the crap, Erso- was this a fabrication by a pissed-off Imperial to give them a reason to send you to Wobani, or were you really thrown in jail for forging Imperial documents?”

“Aye,” she nodded. “I used them to gain entry to trading ports without paying the licensing fees.”

“Have you any experience, then, with scandocs?”

Jyn tilted her head curiously. “Surely you knew about the massacre on Inusagi several years ago?”

That got Draven’s attention. He sat up a little straighter. "During the Sakoola Festival."

She took the response as a cue to keep going. “I’m the reason why Saw and the Partisans were able to infiltrate the chieftess’ palace to conduct the massacre.”

“And you-“

“I didn’t know what they wanted the invitations for,” she cut him off before he could jump to any conclusions. Jyn looked back down at her hands, fiddling out of nervousness from recalling the memory- the blood spraying every which way, the blades cutting through even the innocents, the fact that the atrocity happened merely to send a message rather than make any real sort of meaningful change, all in the name of standing up against the Empire…

“So then how-“

“They just gave me one legitimate copy, and I forged additional ones with a similar authentication code and algorithm,” she said curtly. "I was told to stay outside, that I wasn't allowed in, but I had one extra invitation, and..." She looked him in the eyes with a look stern enough to discourage him from prying into her past any further than was necessary.

Moments passed between the two in a stare down, and her inner eyebrows shifted upwards just enough to plead with the general.

Draven was the first to look away, and he cleared his throat.

“We’d like to make use of your forgery skills to allow some of the rebels to gain entrance to key trading locales for supplies. Many of these locations require traveling through heavily monitored Imperial spaceways, and it was suggested that we enlist your help to make this process easier,” he finally explained, which was a huge relief for Jyn, but she caught an upward turn to the end of his statement, and she couldn’t help but think there was something else hiding behind his words.

Remembering this morning, she had an inkling of what was being left unsaid between his sentences, and one of her eyes squinted in scrutiny. “…and because you’re awfully eager for me to have something to do,” she finished accusingly.

Draven’s lips pursed almost imperceptibly, but he neither confirmed nor denied any possible influence in receiving this task.

“Your performance in this task will make it easier for us to ease you in to larger assignments as the Empire begins to ease up on the search for your head,” Draven merely replied. “We’re expected to receive some permits for you to forge sometime within the day. We’ll notify you again when we obtain the docs. Dismissed.”

Jyn wasted no time in getting up and heading for the door. She had a few choice words for K2 for speaking on her behalf behind her back. But just as she pressed the button on the pad to open the door, she heard Draven once more.

“One last thing, Sergeant Erso.”

She froze and turned around, expecting to hear another shot directed at her, but her eyes widened a tad when she saw Draven looking back at her with softened eyes and the corners of his mouth ticked upwards.

His voice, for once, was kind. “Melshi has reported that they touched down at the location of their mission without issue.”

Her heart skipped a beat: _a status update._

_Cassian is safe. He’s still alive, and safe._

_It’s just an extraction,_ she told herself again, but the voice was much sprightlier this time around, and she left the room with her cheeks pink, a smile that was hard to keep restrained, and a lighter heart.

 

Jyn still had a few choice words for K2 when she came back to her quarters, but she decided to save it for another day as she held out her fist once again for the droid to gently bump.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is 8.6k+ words, so apologies for the suddenly long chapter, especially considering that I'd kept them pleasantly under 3k words prior to this!
> 
>  **PLEASE BE READY FOR ANGST!**  
>  Thanks to [Ivaylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo) / [@crazy-fruit](crazy-fruit.tumblr.com) for suggesting the following tags based on snippets I've fed her:  
> #The Angst Finally Gets Real  
> #I Need My Readers Tears to Feed On  
>  ~~which is pretty apt considering I need something to season my food with~~
> 
> Special thanks to [skitzofreak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak) / [@skitzofreak](skitzofreak.tumblr.com) for helping me flesh out major plot points from this chapter onward. I really don't think I would've even done the outline for this fic if it weren't for your help and advice, so thank you so much Mel <3

"You’ve been given something to do? That's great news!" Bodhi said in between bites of dinner, and in his excitement for Jyn, he had to quickly cover his mouth to stop the food from spraying everyone around him.

Jyn nodded and took a sip of water. She'd taken the parka out again, so elated from the good news that she felt the need to wear it to fully bask in the positive changes that were finally happening.

_Cassian landed safely._

_You've been given a task._

_We're working towards the liberation of the galaxy._

The ultimate goal was still quite a ways off, and Jyn was far from naive to think that it was within an immediate grasp. But for Draven to finally ask her to utilize some of her best skills for a task that will ultimately help the many...

Well, it wasn't fighting, something that she missed the thrill of, and she was still under what she and Bodhi _affectionately_ called "house arrest", but being able to contribute and create change in spite of that, in spite of being "walled up" on Thila, that would be enough for now.

"Meanwhile, I've been told to assist with ship maintenance," Bodhi finally managed to say with a clear mouth. "It'll mostly be doing checks on them, making sure they're clear for take-off, but lately I've been making friends with some of the droids that work there, and some of the fighter pilots before they head off on missions. You hear things there, so it's not a bad job for house arrest."

Jyn rolled her eyes. "It's like we're still considered a potential enemy even though we've been with the Rebellion for, what, 7 months now?"

"Jyn," he countered, "you already know that it's because the Empire's on the lookout for us. Our mugshots are even on the holonet. Have you seen the crimes you've been accused of? They're even trying to pin the Death Star's destruction on you. It's one hell of a fabrication."

"What, their version of the truth?" She shrugged. "I couldn't care less what the Empire has to say about me- none of it was ever nice to begin with. If they want to come find me, then so be it. But the Alliance should know better."

 _Mon Mothma should know better,_ she thought bitterly.

"And yet," she raised her arms and scanned the room to emphasize the now-nearly-empty mess hall, "here we are, able to take our time eating dinner because, unlike the others, we don't have a lot to do."

Bodhi nodded and finished up his meal without another word, but there was something about the way he hummed in reaction that sounded a bit uneasy, a bit unconvinced, a bit scared to give any further opinion about it. As curious as she was to pick at his brains, she wouldn't pry either way- whether Bodhi wanted to divulge his thoughts was not her business. And if he decided to give his two credits on the matter, she could handle it. She was a grown-up, after all, and this was a time of war. She'd been told worse things, by worse people, and in more malicious ways than Bodhi could probably think up.

* * *

When Jyn got back to her quarters, she curled up onto her bed and checked her datapad.

No new messages.

It was to be expected- hangar activity had been relatively low on Thila today, according to Bodhi. Perhaps the docs she needed to start her forgery hadn't arrived yet.

Absentmindedly, she started fiddling with the blaster burn mark near the slanted pocket on the left-side of Cassian's parka. The fabric had a small hole, and the texture was darker and just a bit rougher, the threads fraying slightly but still holding its general shape. He really _did_ take the parka with him everywhere, didn't he? Every burn, every rip and tear, every patch of discoloration had a story. Not much different from the scratches, the scars, the small patches of discolored skin she found on his body, she mused. Parts of his skin were roughed up or chapped from the dry weather, among other things, but if she slipped her hands under his tunic, her fingers gingerly smoothing over the skin as they wandered his torso in-between intimate kisses, she could find the softer places and caress them with her hands as well as her lips.

His felt more special, though. If they found themselves with just a bit more time together, as infrequent as it was, his lips would take their time brushing over the rough parts of her own skin, leaving trails of kisses over the damage that war had dealt her through the years. She remembered those moments fondly- each kiss felt like a genuflection, an acknowledgement of the hardships she'd gone through, a silent but serious declaration of emotion.

Perhaps- _maybe_ \- Cassian meant more to her than she originally gave credit for.

She doesn’t recall ever kissing his scars with the same reverence, however.

Perhaps- _maybe_ \- she meant more to Cassian than he meant to her.

Guilt started to wash over Jyn and she found herself reflexively tightening the parka around her body. The sound of it reminded her of the hugs he'd give her from behind whenever he came looking for her after returning from a mission. There was a specific crinkling noise of the parka's fabric and a certain firmness he embraced her with, like a signature or a code word shared between the two of them, or a greeting born out of an inside joke only they were privy to.

She didn't want to admit it, but as much as she tried to keep going despite his absence, it became rather hard when there were hints of him everywhere. The traces of his presence, as warm as the memories were, only served to make cold the reality that he was, in fact, absent.

Jyn sighed, but the breath came out more like a lonely shudder that was three steps away from tears.

Her datapad beeped, snapping her out of her thoughts, and the screen lit up:

> Received our items. Make your quarters available after breakfast.  
>  \- GEN D

Jyn's heart fluttered.

_If they're coming to my quarters, then..._

They'll provide her with equipment.

She wouldn't have to work in an office.

She could be free to take her work with her everywhere.

 _Well, maybe not everywhere,_ she thought wryly.

She set an alarm on her datapad and decided to get ready for bed when she heard a knock on her door.

"Jyn? Did you need me to braid your hair again?" K2 asked from the other side, his voice surprisingly clear and coherent despite the thickness of the durasteel.

She hesitated. Could she ask K2 to do such a favor again? _Well, he DID offer..._ she thought, but at the same time, she didn't want to rely on that for comfort so often. It was a forgotten ritual, something of the past. Things like that should be put to rest, buried and put away. It was something Saw himself had taught her, to force her to move on from her parents leaving her behind. _Honor the past, but do not dwell upon it,_ he would tell her every time he caught her crying over her stolen family. _The time you spend dwelling is time you can spend moving forward instead._

Indeed, the words were rough but necessary for an 8-year old, though she noted the irony in her uncertainty of having truly moved on from her losses.

"I can tell you're hesitating. Wouldn't you prefer to get your hair braided so you can fall asleep more easily?"

_He had a point._

And, truth be told, she really found it annoying that her hair would get knotted up from all the tossing and turning in her sleep before landing on Thila.

"I'd like my hair braided, please," she called back, and the door slid open.

The braids were a little different this time- the motions of K2's fingers were even more soothing than the night before. It might have been her imagination, but she was somewhat convinced that K2 had added more motions solely to comfort her and lull her to sleep.

"You don't have to do this," she murmured, her eyelids drooping at the comfort and satisfaction being gently handled.

K2 continued to manipulate more strands of hair without a word, but Jyn didn't have to wait too long to hear his response: "Cassian said I had to."

She accepted it without question, understanding this to be a typical response of the droid, but she found herself confused at his word choice.

There was a sadness that returned to her as K2 continued his braiding. There seemed to be, as far as she could tell, an inordinate amount of people going out of their way to help her. And none of them had ever thought to ask her of anything in return. For some, returning the kindness was no longer an option. She adored Cassian deeply, and enjoyed his presence, support, and companionship. The fact that she hadn't been forthcoming enough to say those three words to him as he left for his mission started to weigh on her shoulders as she remembered the last "I love you"s to her own parents, and the lack of one for Saw.

_No. Stop that._

She had to tell him once he returned. She couldn't forgive herself until she did.

_Spend your time moving forward._

She assured herself that tomorrow would be a fresh start, and, with or without Cassian, she would wake up with her head held high and an energy to keep chugging. Little by little, she would help chip away at the Empire for the sake of the cause, for the sake of her parents, for the sake of her care-taker. It's just an extraction mission, after all, and it would only be a few weeks until he returned, and they could catch up on everything with their new experiences on a new base.

_A better, new start._

Jyn quite liked the idea.

As K2 finished off the elastics on her braids she felt a comfort from within, and drifted off to sleep, curled up in Cassian’s parka.

* * *

The setup for her work supplies was quick and easy. Draven towered over her, his eyebrows raised with intrigue as he scanned her small frame.

"We _do_ have parkas your size," he said dryly.

"This one will do just fine, thanks," she shot back.

He looked as though he had something else to say- something along the lines of a concern, based on the way his eyes continued to furtively scan her- but he shook his head and sighed with resignation. Turning to Jyn's desk and gesturing to the scandocs placed there, he moved on to the true task at hand.

"These three scandocs are different permits for port entry in Imperial territory. We need you to replicate these permits for three people each, a total of nine. K2SO has confirmed that he can aid by double-checking the codes for authenticity once you've finished. Afterwards, present them to me, and we should have more docs for you to replicate later." He handed her the code replicator, which Jyn took and turned it over, marveling at the improved, sleek form and features she was unaccustomed to seeing in the first replicator she’d been given by Saw.

She still had her misgivings about the Alliance and their extreme reluctance to give the Rogue One squad anything meaningful to do, and Mothma’s outright refusal to send them on any off-planet mission left her so bitter. It felt like an accusation, as though she were guilty of some kind of wrongdoing, even if everyone insisted that they had done nothing wrong. She could see it in the way Mon Mothma looked at her and the way that Draven attempted to maintain as much distance between them as possible.

And yet, here he was, standing in front of her without a table between them for once, giving her _a brand-new code replicator._ They could’ve given her a barely functioning, second-hand replicator, and she would’ve found a way to make it work regardless, but they gave her a new one, obtained through Force-knows-what means that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to.

She looked up at Draven with a brightness she couldn’t hide, her eyes glimmering. “I’ll get started on these right away.”

He straightened his posture a bit more ( _He actually slumped?_ ) and cleared his throat. “Very well then. I’d like to note that you’re free to do this at any location on-base as is comfortable, but please keep these tasks under wraps. As we are still in the middle of looking for a new base to officially settle in and the Empire still trying to look for us-“

“Sir, with all due respect, even the Partisans had their own OPSEC procedures,” Jyn said with a hand up. Her interruption caused him to appear slightly ruffled, but his shoulders relaxed when she gave him a small smile. “I’m just glad to be given something relatively important to do.”

Draven sighed, but it sounded slightly less exasperated this time around.

 

Jyn Erso- former Partisan, the best in Saw’s cadre, a professional- did what every good soldier did when it came to keeping things a secret, and went straight to Bodhi to tell him everything. He nearly spit out his tea at the boldness in which Jyn forced him to swear secrecy about her given task.

“What the hell, Jyn? Did you forget that OPSEC meant ‘operations security’?” he hissed, looking out from the cargo ship to ensure no one was standing around or eavesdropping.

“What, you think I can’t trust you with anything?” she asked, tinkering with the code replicator, not even bothering to look up as she sat cross-legged on the floor of the ship’s interior.

“Not the point,” he sighed.

She could feel his eyes on her as she continued to observe the coding of one of the original permits- “Hmm, this must be using a different encryption method,” she muttered- but her mind was barely present, and most of her attention focused solely on cracking this code. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt in years, and it gave her a nostalgic thrill that she couldn’t explain.

“She _was_ rather bored since before we landed on Thila,” K2 explained, helping Bodhi with the ship’s precheck. He gave Bodhi a thumbs-up when he was done checking the electrical systems and the health of the comms, allowing Bodhi to check the items off the list on his datapad.

“Take any more shots at me like that, and I might throw another balisong at you,” Jyn muttered, her threat half-hearted at best, and her eyes remained fixated on the replicator as she continued to work.

K2 let out a huffing sound. “Like that would work on me.”

The droid was met with a loud and heavy clunk in the back from the wrench Jyn managed to find within arm’s reach.

It was an amicable silence between the three, save for the occasional sigh, grunt, or clattering of supplies. Despite their house arrest, Jyn felt a certain level of calm and freedom- it was a great way to remind herself that she still had good things in her life. She had a family and a meaningful job; it wouldn’t be long until Cassian came back, and she could once again have a partner.

* * *

Jyn was so enthralled in her task, in fact, that she finished modifying and duplicating the permits in two and a half days.

She took the moment to glance sideways at her closet, where Cassian's parka hung, and she smiled at it. _Look, I got all these done ahead of schedule,_ she thought. It was a silly thing if she really stopped and thought about it, acting as though Cassian could hear her thoughts if she channeled it through the parka, but in her elation and pride, she did it to catalogue the moment, bookmarking it in her mind to share with him later when he returned.

"Well done, Jyn," K2 said, and his optics flickered brightly as he wrapped up his coding analysis. "These should pass muster at Imperial gates."

She whispered a triumphant "yes" as she helped detach the wires from his ports.

"Provided, of course, they haven't updated their security programming since before we extracted you from Wobani several months ago."

Jyn rolled her eyes and resumed her cleanup. "Of course."

"Although...I believe you human sentients would consider this 'a win in your books', so I suppose it's something worth celebrating, even if the probability of success isn’t exactly 100%."

She rapped on his chassis. "Shut up."

K2 raised his fist in response, and she bumped it in kind.

She got up from her desk and stretched and twisted to get the blood flowing again. Feeling relaxed in a way she hadn't felt in a while, Jyn decided to let herself take a break for the rest of the day before submitting her assignment.

"This is wonderful news, little sister," Chirrut beamed as a group of rebels quietly shuffled out of the room he was in. "All is as the Force wills it, and you have finally been led to a new role for a new purpose. Things finally seem to be falling into place for you."

Jyn's cheeks warmed a little when Chirrut placed a hand on her shoulder, and she basked in the comfort of the gesture.

Chirrut, feeling her weight shift under his hand, lowered his head to level with hers. "There's something else you want," he declared. The action would unnerve most sentients, seeing as the man was blind, but with K2 bluntly making spot-on observations of his own, the shock had worn off over time, and Jyn instead smiled warmly and let her positivity radiate outwards.

"Actually,” she started, “I've been feeling antsy, and I was hoping we could spar for a bit."

He hummed with amusement. "Nothing can truly smother your fighting spirit, can it?"

"I suppose not," she chuckled, shaking her head. The action meant nothing to the blind Guardian, she knew, but nonetheless Chirrut reacted to it, and he gestured to the now-empty chairs. Jyn rushed to move them aside, excited to get back into fighting form.

When Jyn returned to her quarters after dinner, she showered to wash off the grime of the day, but she felt even lighter coming out of it, as though she washed away the stress she didn’t know was weighing on her. She resumed her routine of hugging Cassian's parka before putting it on, and asked K2 to braid her hair once again. Feeling a swirl of emotions- the high of her accomplishments for the day, the comfort of Cassian's clothed embrace, and the exhaustion from the pummeling she got from Chirrut- her eyes drooped the second she laid back in bed, and for once in a long while, Jyn slept soundly.

* * *

“How are you liking your new role?” Jyn asked the next afternoon, firing a series of bursts of the repeater cannon in her hands. Instead of hitting the Stormtrooper dummy at the far end of the shooting range, however, the blasts just barely missed the mark, and the smoke wafted from the burnt marks on the walls behind it.

“It’s boring, but easy.” Baze prodded her between the shoulder blades gently. “You’ll need to roll your shoulders back a bit, little sister,” he gruffed. “Crane your neck if you must, but you’ll get a more accurate aim if you don’t curl your shoulders inward.”

Jyn relaxed her posture and rolled her shoulders repeatedly to get the tension out. Tilting her head to the left, then the right, and rolling her head to get her neck to crack, she steeled herself once more and followed Baze’s instructions, lifting the repeater cannon back up and pointing it at a distant target. The feeding line bumped against her thigh as she did so, and the refrigerant tank clattered when she rolled her shoulders once more for finality before taking aim and firing away.

The dummy was blown to smithereens, and the ashes of the cloth fibers floated back down like sizzled feathers as they hit the floor.

Jyn lowered the repeater cannon with a large grin. “ _Now_ I see why this is your weapon of choice.”

They looked at each other with proud smiles, and Baze continued to give her pointers for shooting techniques. “It never hurts to have an array of skills in weaponry,” he declared, “although, I’d rather use this than my own fists.”

She shifted her weight and raised the cannon again, testing a new firing posture. “If Chirrut were here he’d probably talk about how his trust in the Force is his greatest weapon.”

Baze laugh was a boom that matched the strength of Jyn’s shot. “One day he’ll stop being stubborn and thank me for saving his ass all this time.”

There was something about the idea of Chirrut’s optimistic shyness towards someone he loved that reminded Jyn of Cassian, and a part of her heart felt a pang, but she shoved it aside as she fired again. _He only landed at their destination last week,_ she told herself. _He’ll be home soon._ Until then, she would continue to practice handling different blasters under Baze’s tutelage, now that he was tasked with firearms and ammunition management. On and on she took aim and shot at the Stormtrooper dummies that popped up, feeling a kind of relief from finally being able to hone what she felt was one of her best skills when she was in Saw’s cadre.

She wasn’t sure Baze would ever admit it, but she felt a sense of pride emanating from him as he gingerly helped her remove the refrigerant tank from her back once the practice session was over.

* * *

Jyn finally found herself doing a comfortable routine. Although she spent most of her time code slicing, she made sure to attend each meal with the Rogue One squad on-base, and she would always take a break from her code replicator by spending it with a different member of the team. When it came to spending time with K2, they came up with so many ideas for modifications to the droid that they spent the entire testing period thinking up ways to modify K2’s current firmware a few days into Jyn’s next batch of replicating assignments.

“My primary function is analysis. Conducting a risk assessment on the fly like that is a feature I insist on keeping when you upgrade my firmware,” K2 insisted.

“Fair enough,” said Jyn, and she put a screwdriver between her teeth in order to add to the list of features she wanted to give him.

“It would be a shame if you let me down and change me for the worse, Jyn,” he lamented. “While the chances of that aren’t particularly high, you _do_ have a track record of being continually unexpected, so I suppose we shall see what you manage to come up with.”

Jyn added one more feature to the list: _More snark_.

“We’ll need to consider redoing your paint as well,” she remarked after finishing her diagnostics and closing his rear panel. “You’ve been scuffed up so many times that you’ll get a lot of unwanted attention if we get sent out on another mission.”

“My appearance is just fine,” he replied, indignant at the thought.

“I think so too,” she said casually, and she shrugged. “But if we have to wear costumes while undercover, surely you can understand that renewing your paint and Imperial logo would be the same thing?”

K2 looked away and his eyes flickered again in calculation. Then, “You have the benefit of removing your costumes whenever you please. These scuffs are the only thing I have to distinguish me as a rebel.”

She considered these words.

But before she could come up with a response, K2 continued. “I suppose it can’t be helped. But I prefer to keep myself as scuffed up as the rest of you until it comes time for us to go on another mission in Imperial-controlled territory.”

She smiled. “That’s fair. But at least let me clean and re-oil your joints.”

His eyes brightened at the idea. “I would very much like that, Jyn.”

“Great- see if you can figure out if Bodhi’s still at the hangar bay. I think he has most of the materials he needs; maybe he can help us out if he’s done with his tasks.”

“Understood,” he replied, and he leaned back against the wall as his eyes turned dark, scanning the base’s comms systems to check for activity from the pilot.

Jyn turned her attention to her code replicator in the meantime, working on new the new scandocs that Draven had assigned her to replicate for other agents. She still had plenty of time to work on them- he specifically requested they be completed by the end of the week- but with how many documents she’s had to forge, she added a personal challenge of seeing how quickly she can get them replicated and pass K2’s inspection. She’s been able to top herself each time by a few seconds so far, and she was eager to shave that time down even more.

“How curious,” K2 mumbled.

"What's up?" Jyn asked, slowing her movements to look up at the droid. His eyes were flickering as he sat connected to the base's holonet, and his slouched appearance against the wall of her quarters made him appear lost in thought.

“It seems as though General Draven has received communications with Melshi's ship, according to the message traffic.”

This gave Jyn reason to pause completely, and she set down her supplies. “Recently, you mean?”

K2 shook his head. “Three days ago, actually.”

Jyn hummed and gave it some thought. Draven _was_ a secretive man, but it was also possible that it would be more pertinent for him to inform the squad that Melshi would be landing within a few days. If it took a couple of weeks for Melshi to arrive at the location of their assignment, it would be a while yet for them to return. “I'm sure they're fine.” _They're well-trained, highly-skilled soldiers, after all._ “Maybe Draven just doesn't want to tell us anything until they're close to landing?”

K2 was silent for a few moments, unmoving, clearly running calculations, and Jyn stared in anticipation of his response.

It seemed innocuous, the way he said it, but a shiver of fear ran down her spine at his selection of words: “I'd like to think of that as the most likely scenario, yes.”

Silence.

“Do you know what was said?” she asked hesitantly.

He shook his head again. “Unfortunately not; only that a transmission had been sent from Melshi's ship, and that it was received at General Draven's main work room.”

Jyn tried to stay optimistic. “If that's the case, the transmission may not have been meant for Draven.”

“Or, the message could have been delivered _to_ the general, and he still chose not to inform you.”

 _That's definitely a possibility,_ she realized, but a part of her wanted to give Draven some benefit of the doubt. He'd been forthright with informing her that Cassian had landed at their destination for their extraction, and despite being grounded, he still brought her in to help in other ways. _You're code splicing now_ _._ Surely it was Draven's way of slowly easing in to a trust in her, the way he did for Cassian.

_...Wasn't it?_

Her datapad beeped.

A message from Draven.

> Report to my office at your earliest convenience.  
>  \- GEN D

She and K2 looked at each other. Perhaps Draven would update her on Cassian.

 

“You needed something, sir?” Jyn asked, cautiously optimistic for what he would say next.

He had his hands behind his back.

It wasn't a new sight, but he seemed to be extra tense this time around. There was a slight bounce to his heels and his eyes shifted to and fro, refusing to look directly at Jyn.

It was bad news.

Something happened to Cassian.

He was avoiding her gaze because he was feeling guilty, he had something to tell her, but couldn't find a way to, he-

“I'd like to give you this,” Draven said simply, and handed her a box.

Jyn looked at him with utter confusion. A _gift_? From _Draven_? It seemed very unlike him to show affection through presents. She opened the lid to reveal-

She sighed with relief at what was inside, but she'd be lying if she wasn't also just a touch exasperated with him over this.

“Sir, I already told you I have a perfectly usable parka that I wear on my free time,” she declared as she pulled a parka out. It was bluer, bolder, much newer and the fabric crisper than Cassian's parka. The fuzz on the hood wasn't quite the same, either- it felt a bit _too soft_ , not at all dried and worn and frayed and coarse like Cassian's parka.

“It's new, and in your size,” he insisted, clearly somewhat annoyed with seeing Jyn wearing an oversized parka meant for a much taller, lankier person than herself.

She didn't want to look a gift falthier in the mouth, however, and she accepted it. “If it'll make you feel better, I'll wear this one every now and then.”

“It would certainly make me feel better,” he said simply, and there was a twinge of relief in his voice. “Anyway, I suspect you still have to continue testing the four new scandocs we asked you to splice for some of our agents, so I'll let you be on your way.”

Jyn nodded and carried the box under her arm as she walked out, but as she reached the door frame, she paused, having remembered her conversation with K2 earlier.

“Actually, sir,” she started, turning around slowly to look at him again.

Draven regained his stiff posture as she did so. “Yes?”

“Has there been any word from Cassian since they landed at their destination for the extraction mission?”

He remained stiff and unmoving when he responded: “No.”

Her lips pursed, but only for the briefest of moments. Two could play at the spy face game.

“We haven't received any transmissions from Captain Andor.”

It was almost imperceptible, but she noticed his nostrils flare slightly, and her eyes widened slightly. She caught him in the lie.

He was lying to her.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Her fists tightened as she fought to maintain her composure, which she managed to hide by adjusting the placement of the gift box on her hip.

She smiled. “No, sir, not at all. But, you _will_ let me know if there's an update on Cassian's status?”

Draven nodded curtly. “On a need-to-know basis, of course.”

_Of course._

Jyn lingered just a little longer, her hand on the doorframe and one foot already out into the hall as she contemplated the weight of his words. They looked at each other, clearly with the understanding that they were each wearing a well-crafted mask, arms up and fists at the ready, waiting to see if the other would strike first so that they could parry, and the air was thickening so much from the tension that it became a game of chicken to see who would cave- or strike- first.

“Now, if you'll excuse me,” Draven finally said, and as he and Jyn both turned away from each other, she waited until the doors slid shut behind her before gasping for air and letting the rest of her body register her racing heartbeat.

 

“That _is_ rather odd,” K2 bemused once Jyn returned to her quarters to tell him what happened between her and Draven.

“I don't trust it,” she said, slumping in her chair and letting Cassian's parka hood conceal her eyes and nose. “I don't trust the parka he gave me, either.”

“Well, in fairness,” he responded, observing the parka closely, “he _had_ been complaining about your choice to wear Cassian's parka. It makes you look like a child.” He tossed the parka back to Jyn, causing her to be completely engulfed in blue fabric and tan colored fur.

She heard that subtle, but distinct sound of K2 taking yet another photo.

“At least this parka is free of any bugs or listening devices. I estimate that the chances of this being a genuine gift are high.”

Jyn blew the hood of the new parka down to reveal the rest of her squinted face.

“Very high,” he reassured her.

“Still, what about Cassian?”

“I surmise that we don't have much of a choice but to wait. Though, Alliance protocol _does_ state that should a rebel die while in the service of the Rebellion, people listed on their contact sheet will be informed.”

She sat up straighter. “So you're saying you'd know right away if something bad happened to Cassian?”

K2 tilted his head. “Actually, based on the priority list, you would be informed first.”

_What?_

“I don't understand what Cassian's logic is, putting you as the first contact and me second. My chances of survival are much higher than yours. I'm a droid, after all, and you're soft and squishy and prefer to take on tasks with a slim chance of success or survival,” he ranted. Nevertheless, he shook his head and looked back at her. “The look on your face tells me that you weren't aware Cassian did that.”

She wasn't. At all.

She placed Cassian and K2 on her list as first and second, mostly because she trusted them the most, but also because, outside of Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze (who were also on the list), she didn't really have anyone else to look after her. She was so accustomed to fighting for herself and never needing to worry about anyone surviving her that it was less of a surprise that Jyn was on Cassian's list, and much more of a revelation that he thought so highly of her that he deliberately switched K2's placement on the contact sheet to put her up at the top.

_He cares more about you than you do him._

No.

She wasn't going to let herself think that.

She loved him. She just didn't express it the same way.

The doubts weren't going to get to her, and she wasn't going to let the thoughts sink in to her mind any further.

She would know right away if something bad happened to Cassian. She would be the first to know. Until then, she would wait until he returned, and once he did, she could take the next step, try a little harder to show her affection and caring, to demonstrate that she felt just as strongly as he felt about her. No more ambiguities.

All that was left to do was wait.

* * *

Although Jyn loved wearing Cassian's parka and took great pains to care for it and keep it intact, she realized that people took her a little more seriously when she didn't look so comically small by wearing the parka that Draven had gifted her. Deciding to only wear it in her quarters for the time being, she noted that Draven looked slightly relieved to be wearing the parka he'd given her as she dropped off her forged scandocs later that week, as requested, and went about her day.

The routine was nice, she found- within a week and a half she found herself with some stability and regularity like back on Yavin. She found company and solace in helping Bodhi with ship maintenance and pre-checks on some days, sparring Chirrut regularly, and learning more about different blasters and ammunition that she was less familiar with, thanks to Baze, on other days. Together with Bodhi, she even cleaned, buffed, and re-oiled K2's joints and chassis, cleaning up the scrapes leftover from previous battles to maintain their formerly Imperial shine in spite of the chipped and scraped-off paint, and even modifying his coding so that he could make better use of his energy and recharge faster.

And, much to Jyn's enjoyment, they continued to meet together for at least dinnertime in the mess hall, catching up with each other on their day's events. It felt very much like a true family, and reminded her of the days when Mama would come back from tending to the crops and Papa would return home, stained with droid oil and grease from repairs, everyone coming together at the same time every day.

All this was as close to home as it could get for her, if not for Cassian's absence.

 _Soon_ , she told herself as she checked her calendar and noticed that an additional two weeks had passed since Draven had informed Jyn about Cassian’s landing. Soon, the absence will be filled, and they could go back to being a complete team.

She would tell him she loved him.

She would kiss him with the same intensity that he’d kiss her.

She would reciprocate all those gestures and more, if it meant living without regrets of not having done what she could on all fronts.

_Soon._

* * *

The weather on Thila was quite a bit warmer and more humid than it had been compared to the past few days, but Jyn wouldn’t let the weather wear her down. She hugged Cassian’s parka in the morning, as was the ritual, taking a deep breath to indulge in his scent (much fainter now since it’d been more than a month since he gave it to her) before patting it in farewell. The sleeves of her tunic were rolled up as she made her way to breakfast, and she could already feel the need to pat her sweat off her face before she even sat down at their usual table.

Breakfast had been good this time around, mostly due to the lovely surprise of Bettnam-style iced caf Bodhi made for the group after he used his connections to swipe some of the kitchen’s supplies. The ice clinked in her glass as she took a swig, and the creamy goodness felt like a sign of good, productive things to come.

Her post-breakfast sparring had gotten more intense today, however, and as Chirrut knocked her off her feet yet again and his staff pinned her chest down to the mat, a few curious rebels engaged in scattered applause at the performance.

She was winded and out of breath. Although the air ventilation and climate systems were still running in the room they were in, the hints of humidity still seeped in, and she felt even stickier. Chirrut smiled down on her as he offered his hand, and she took it wholeheartedly as she was hoisted back up on her feet.

“You’re getting a lot better,” he beamed. “I dare say you could teach close-combat fighting to some of the rebels once you’re back in form.”

He tossed her a towel and she wiped her face, not caring if her hair stuck to random places across her cheeks and neck. “You saying I’m not back to proper form?”

“Yes, yes I am,” he grinned, moving his staff to whack at Jyn’s hand to stop her from pinching his side in retaliation. “Though, it can hardly be helped, can it? Since we’ve been under house arrest this whole time.”

She supposed the inside joke would never get old.

There was a huge relief in coming back to her quarters to enjoy the much cooler air circulating through, and she spent the next few hours tackling a couple of forged permits while waiting for K2 to return from hanging around with Bodhi and his ship pre-checks. She’d nearly finished and was ready to message K2 to come back for testing when she heard a knock on the other side of her door.

“Jyn? Are you decent?” K2’s muffled voice called out.

“Come in!” she called back.

She hadn’t looked up at him just yet, her eyes still focused on the code replicator, but as she heard his clunky steps clack against the hard flooring of her quarters, she started talking anyway. “Hey, I’m almost done with these permits, if you could please test them soon, that’d be great.”

Jyn heard a whir from high up, and she assumed it was a nod.

“Great, I’ll go ahead and message Draven and let him know these should be done by end of day.”

She swiveled around in her chair as she finished sending the memo to the general, but was shocked to find an extremely shiny droid standing in front of her.

Her jaw dropped. “K2, what-“

He held up a hand to stop her. “Somehow I’ve let Bodhi convince me to let him wax me like a shiny new ship. I weighed the pros and cons and decided it wasn’t going to harm me or my circuitry in any way, but I failed to run a risk assessment on the social ramifications of the decision.”

Jyn bit her lip to stifle laughter.

“I have regrets.”

She swiveled away to flush the image out before it was too late.

She heard K2 yank on the wires for the doc scanner to plug them into himself and he sat down with his legs curled towards his chest next to Jyn’s desk. “Let’s get this over with before I have even more regrets.”

Jyn had to resort to sliding the forged permits his way without looking directly at him. “You might have to do this yourself,” she said a little breathlessly, still trying to fight the laughter.

There was a moment of silence as he ran the necessary security checks, but he must have seen her shoulders shake quietly in amusement, and he let out an automated sigh. “Fine. Laugh. But no fist bump for you.”

When she finally finished cracking up, she messaged Bodhi a picture of a highfive.

 

The testing went rather smoothly and lasted long enough for Jyn to get over the sight of her shiny droid friend- _Who would’ve thought, Cassian_? she thought- and she grabbed her datapad to check for further messages. There was an unread one from Bodhi (“K2 should be proud to be the shiniest droid in the ‘verse!”), but after that, no new messages.

“That’s quite strange, seeing as the general is normally prompt with his responses,” K2 remarked.

Jyn nodded. It’d been two hours since she sent the message, and yet, no response.

_Perhaps he’s nose-deep in work._

She gathered the forged scandocs in her datapad in a ruckscak and put on her boots. “I’ll just head over to his work room and deliver them myself. He’ll most likely be there.”

K2 stood up, the lights of her quarters bouncing violently off his shiny chassis. “Very well. I’ll see if I can’t get Bodhi to tone down the shine on this wax. I dare say this appearance is similar in impact to when you wear Cassian’s parka, and I much prefer to be a foreboding presence rather than an adorable one.”

She smirked at him and stood akimbo. “Are you actually calling me ‘adorable’, K2?”

There was a muffled wheeze of a sigh from his voice box as he opened the door. “Today is a day of regrets, I see.”

Jyn couldn’t help but let out another hearty laugh as she closed the door shut behind them.

Draven’s work room wasn’t difficult to get to- what _was_ difficult, however, was enduring the heat and humidity as she passed through the hangar bay, where K2 broke off to look for Bodhi. She had barely traversed half the hangar and she already found her armpits sweating and the stray hairs of her bun sticking to her nape. It wouldn’t be long before she crossed the whole length of it, and the faster she walked, the faster she could retreat to the climate-controlled bliss of the work rooms that Draven practically camped in.

When she entered the room, however, he wasn’t there.

“Where has General Draven gone?” she asked a technician sitting closest to the door.

They took off their headphones and looked up at her with a shrug. “Haven’t seen ‘im all day, if I’m honest,” they replied. “I just assumed he wanted to take a break for once, so I never thought much into his whereabouts. Sorry,” they said, and put their headphones back on to monitor the comms.

 _Strange,_ she thought, but she decided instead to check his quarters, which, if she remembered correctly, was down the hall and off to the right somewhere.

She knocked on his door and listened closely for any signs of rustling or snoring, but as she called out, “Hello? General Draven, sir?” she was met with more silence.

 _Guess I’ll have to turn these in another day_ , Jyn decided, when she felt a buzz from her rucksack. She pulled out the datapad and got another message from Bodhi:

> They’ve landed! Hurry!

Her heart started to race.

_They’ve landed._

_Cassian is back._

She turned on her heels and ran as fast as possible to the hangar.

 _It was just an extraction mission,_ she thought yet again, and with each pounding step she took on the concrete, she felt a bit silly for worrying about his safety in the first place. _Of course they would come back safely, this is Melshi and_ Cassian _, for Force’s sake!_

Her excitement was magnified when she felt the hints of Thila’s suffocatingly thick heat enter her lungs, a sign that she was ever-nearing the hangar.

She would run to the ship.

She would watch him walk down the ramp, looking tired and haggard as he usually did after having come back from a distant mission.

She would wrap her arms around him.

She would take his face into her hands, the same way he would do with hers, and press her forehead against his.

She would kiss him.

She would tell him that she loved him.

She would do everything in her power to show him just how much he meant to her.

She rounded the corner at the end of the hall and was hit with a blast of hot air from the hangar.

The sun wasn’t as high up as it was earlier, and the sky turned a golden yellow, almost orange, causing the ships to cast a cold shadow over the rebels scurrying underneath them. Melshi’s ship had landed safely, albeit with a few dings. Jyn noticed that the ramp was already open, and staff were already there helping to unload. Her eyes scanned the area for Bodhi and K2, but they were nowhere to be found.

She closed the distance between herself and the ship, bumping into a droid and a human pushing a cart away. “Sorry,” she murmured, and she looked down to check on the condition of the cart she just bumped into. The cart was covered in a blanket, but in their scurrying, a portion of the blanket had flipped over to reveal something black underneath, but the two were in a rush to move the cart elsewhere that she didn’t get a good look at it, so she brushed the thought aside as she turned back around. She found Melshi at the ramp, limping down it with heavy footsteps, and she ran up to him.

“Melshi!” she exclaimed, happy to see another squad member back safely.

Melshi looked up at her and her heart sank.

His face had thinned significantly, his eyes were pallid, and his cheekbones hollowed in a ghostly way that made her eyes widen in shock.

She grabbed him by the shoulders just as he was on the verge of falling over. “Melshi? Are you okay? What happened?”

Jyn could feel his body tremble feebly under her grip, which strengthened to keep him up. Distantly, she could hear Bodhi and K2 arrive at her side, and they, too, took in the gaunt image of a haunted Melshi.

He had started to mutter something, but it was hard to make out until she noticed the tears streaming down his face. She dipped her head lower. “Melshi?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Jyn, I-“ he said, but he choked before he could form even half a sentence, and he broke out into sobs.

She looked up and stood on her tip-toes to search other parts of the ship where she stood. But there wasn’t a sign of anyone else there. She looked back down at him. “Melshi, stay with me, it’ll be alright. Where’s Cassian? We need to take you both to a medbay if you’re like this.”

He shook his head violently, as if he couldn’t believe any of this was happening, and he tried with all his strength to push Jyn away. In his weakness, however, the shoving felt more like a patting, and Jyn loosened her grip on him and took a step back to give him space.

She recognized that behavior before- the shoving, the apologies, the uncontrollable sobbing: _guilt_.

In that instant, the heat and humidity of Thila was no more, and she felt a sudden chill reach down to her core as her throat went dry.

It was hard to stop her teeth from chattering as she managed to ask, “Where’s Cassian?”

“I’m sorry,” was all he could respond with, and it came out as a faint whisper.

She suddenly remembered the cart she bumped into on her way to the ramp, how the droid and the human were in such a rush to take it away from the ship, how the blanket had covered something black, something long, something human-shaped...

_No._

Jyn whipped back around and started running for the cart, but K2 yanked on her rucksack to pull her back. Refusing to back down, she twisted to free herself of the rucksack, but he was much too strong, and, much like in Wobani, he lifted her up by the torso, enough to leave her kicking the air in a vain attempt to tear away from her droid friend. She continued to struggle, even as K2 had pleaded with her to calm down.

The voices around her were getting muffled as the realization set in.

She could hear screams of Cassian’s name, but the chill of dread numbed her out so much that she couldn’t tell if the screams were coming from Melshi or herself.

_Cassian! Cassian! Cassian!_

Jyn realized the screams were, in fact, her own, and she stopped herself from screaming herself hoarse.

Her feet finally found the ground as K2 set her down, but he continued to keep a firm grip on her. She turned back around to face Melshi, who was being held up by Bodhi, his sobs finally subsided into sniffling whimpers. His eyes met hers, and he winced reflexively, but she refused to let him break away from her, not this time, not while she still had questions-

“The scarf,” she gasped. “Please tell me you brought the scarf back with him.” She needed it back. She had to keep it. It was the last thing left between the two of them, save for the parka-

The sadness only deepened in his eyes as he shook his head. “Gone. Probably burnt in the explosion,” he said weakly. “I had to bring him back, I couldn’t just leave him there, I-“ was all that he could muster this time before he broke out into tears again.

“I’m so sorry, Jyn,” he said once more between sobs.

Jyn stared back at the cart, the distance between them ever-increasing.

He was supposed to return.

She was supposed to tell him she loved him.

_It was supposed to be just an extraction mission._

Once again, another loved one had been violently snatched away from her, and she couldn’t do anything to save them.

She couldn’t even tell them she loved them.

The Thilan heat failed to return to her body even as the cart turned round the corner and disappeared from her view entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget; this is heavy angst with a happy ending. Hang in there. <3
> 
> I _do_ think now would be a good time for me to [reveal the song that inspired this fic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtIvGrqAZE) so many months ago, particularly this bit:
> 
> _You'd probably think I was psychotic (if you knew)_   
>  _What I still got in my closet (sad but true)_   
>  _I slip it on over my shoulders, It's something I'll never get over_   
>  _It makes me feel a little bit closer to you_   
>  _I can't keep your love, I can't keep your kiss_   
>  _Gave you everything and all I got was this_
> 
> _I'm still rocking your hoodie and chewing on the strings_   
>  _It makes me think about you so I wear it when I sleep_   
>  _I kept the broken zipper and cigarette burns_   
>  _Still rocking your hoodie, baby, even though it hurts_   
>  _I'm still rocking your hoodie_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to cover certain plot points in this chapter, but being the #extra bitch that I am, i wrote too much. So it's getting split again into two chapters. ~~i wanna say i'm sorry about that buuuuuuuut i also kinda don't want to.~~

_The parka rested neatly on her shoulders, the faint scent of the man she loved trailing gently behind it as he swung it around to let her have it. His hands were heavy when he placed his hands on her, and she registered a quick but firm squeeze, a finality to his gesture, a farewell to his favorite item, now being worn by what Jyn finally understood to be someone he truly treasured._

_“Take care of my parka, then.”_

_She could see the faint smile, the way his lips- thin, but soft- moved as he said six simple words. With the way his lips moved, the words should’ve been easy to interpret, the hushed, warm tones of his voice should have been streaming gently through like a loving tickle in her ear, but there was something about it this time, something blurred, wispy, and unclear, and the sound of it was muffled and echoed. No matter how hard her mind tried to catch the memory of it, it fell through her fingers like sand, but if she looked down, all she could see was the sand disappearing into the blackness below her._

_“You’re not allowed to die until you bring back my scarf!”_

_You’re not allowed to die until you bring-_

_You’re not allowed to die-_

“Jyn!”

Jyn startled and her eyes snapped to what was in front of her. The sounds around her, once ignored but now roaring back into deafening clarity, returned, and her body finally seemed ready to move again as she regained her focus and said: “Bodhi?”

Bodhi had been gripping her by the shoulders, it dawned on her, and she belatedly realized that he was the reason why her shoulders felt heavy with dread.

Or maybe they served to draw attention to it.

She couldn’t believe it. There was just no way that cart was carrying Cassian’s body away. If there was an explosion, then perhaps Melshi was wrong, perhaps he brought back the wrong corpse, perhaps Cassian was still alive and out there somewhere…

But there was no way she was going to accept the fact that an explosion took _another_ person away from her.

“My datapad,” she said, recovering slowly but surely from her initial shock. She dug in her knapsack, trying her best not to panic, and pulled out the datapad, scanning her notifications, her inbox, any sign of a message from Draven. If K2 was telling the truth (and, based on his slight irritation from discussing the topic at all, she was more than certain he was), then Draven would be sending word about his status, if she was the first emergency contact.

No messages.

The body just turned round the corner, in fairness.

She swung around and looked at Melshi, still looking as though his guilt was going to crush him whole.

“Melshi.” She placed a hand on his shoulder as gently as she could. “Melshi, please.”

He raised his head again, sniffling.

Jyn winced- he couldn’t look her in the eye.

“How long did it take you to travel back?”

“A week and a half,” he managed to get out. “I had to take an extra four days Standard just to avoid pursuit. I wish I could’ve brought them back sooner, I-“

“Melshi,” Bodhi said comfortingly. “We need to take you to the medbay.”

He looked as though he wanted to resist, but there wasn’t much of himself left as he continued to cling to Bodhi, who had already started to escort him away from the hangar.

K2 stayed behind with Jyn. “You don’t believe Cassian’s dead.”

“No.”

After a split moment of silence, K2 spoke up again. “Based on what just unfolded, the chances it’s true are…” he said, but his voice trailed off.

A shiver ran down Jyn’s spine that pierced the Thilan heat; if K2 couldn’t even come up with a percentage- or, worse, refuse to divulge it- then could that truly mean Cassian was dead?

She shook her head. “No. I need the autopsy report.”

“Cause of death- burnt to a crisp,” he replied dryly. Coming from anyone else, Jyn would’ve given them what for, but they’d known each other long enough to know this routine. _He’s mentally preparing for the worst_.

Jyn remained adamant. “Draven hasn’t contacted me as Cassian’s next of kin. And even if he did, I’m going to need absolute proof that Cassian is, in fact-“

She refused to finish that sentence and give credence to the idea.

The ship stayed open, Jyn noticed, and she peered inside to see what other damage was done to the ship. A putrid smell wafted out into the hangar, and bits of smeared charcoal trails painted the walls and floor of the ship. Blood smears could be found, mixed in with the ashen ones, but whether they were all exclusively Melshi’s was hard to determine.

There were no other personal effects, however. No bags, no personal items, not even a single blaster. It was possible Melshi had them on his person, or that they were unloaded, but Jyn was disheartened nonetheless to see no sign of any of Cassian’s items.

A familiar beeping noise came from her rucksack, and Jyn hurriedly pulled out her datapad.

One notification from Draven:

> Meeting after dinner.
> 
> \- GEN D

What was she supposed to make of that? Was it good news? Bad news?

_There’s no rush to see him; maybe he just wants to deliver another assignment. Maybe there was no bad news to be told._

Which meant Cassian was still alive.

 _Or maybe_ , the now-panicking part of her whispered, _they want to deliver the bad news when you’re calmer, fed, when you’re less likely to act out._

She nearly scoffed at the idea- she wouldn’t do that just because she was delivered bad news.

 _Although…there’s a first time for everything,_ she cautioned herself, so she shook the voice out of her head to stop herself from worrying, and knocked gently on K2’s chassis as a signal to follow her.

It was obvious by now that the gesture wasn’t really necessary anymore- with Cassian still off-base, she knew K2 would more than likely accompany her wherever she went, regardless if she gave him a cue. Still, being able to rap her knuckles on something as solid as K2’s chassis was, in its own way, a reminder that she was in the real world.

 

Jyn hoped a cold shower would wash off the sweat and get rid of the prickly feeling of the hair on her neck as well, but when she patted herself dry and saw Cassian’s parka hanging at her closet door (just as she left it in the morning), the possibility that Cassian was absent because something bad had happened to him left sent an additional chill down her spine, and she found herself _too_ cold.

As she began to towel off her hair, K2 broke the silence between them since the hangar. “You’re worried.”

Her cheeks puffed as she let out a sigh. “Yeah. I don’t know what to make of Draven’s message. ‘Meeting after dinner’?”

“The chances of it being over good news is-“

Jyn was about to stop him from going any further, afraid to hear the number, but K2’s voice trailed off on its own.

A self-censor.

If anything, the silence made it worse. If K2 found it in himself to stop talking mid-sentence like that, then the numbers must not be good at all.

The heaviness in her stomach weighed her down so much that Jyn couldn’t even eat. Conversations carried on around her in the mess hall; words passed through her ears unregistered, onwards to its destination. Where the destination of those voices were, she didn’t know, but she continued to absentmindedly poke and prod at her food, trying to reassure herself of the circumstances, all while attempting to appear as normal as possible.

_It’s not going to be bad news. Cassian isn’t here, but he’ll be back soon._

Pick up the glass, take a small sip of water, set the glass back down.

_Or maybe he had to be left behind and needs to be picked up elsewhere._

Poke at the food, put fork in mouth, set fork back down.

 _I’ll volunteer for the extraction mission, even_ if _our faces are plastered on holo ads throughout the galaxy._

Pretend to chew.

_Melshi brought back the wrong body, that’s all._

Pretend to swallow.

_He’s out there. I’ll get him._

Repeat the process: pick up the glass again…

_And when I do, I’ll tell him. Finally._

Someone nudged her to the left.

Jyn snapped out of her trance and turned her head: Baze.

“Something’s on your mind, Little Sister.”

 _Of course_ he would say it matter-of-factly. Was there any other way the Guardians made observations?

Rather than make the effort of lying, Jyn simply nodded, and took another false sip of water. Her stomach churned at the action of feigned consumption alone, and she tried not to wince as she set the glass back down.

“We heard what happened,” he said quietly, leaning in closer so as to avoid drawing attention from the others at the table. K2, for his part, seemed to be pretty lively at the table tonight, so Chirrut and Bodhi were wrapped up in conversations with the droid. It was an appreciable distraction, at least in Jyn’s eyes.

“And?” Jyn asked, blinking.

Baze did not appear affronted, though he _did_ seem a bit taken aback by Jyn’s response. Still, his face eased back in to his usual expression, albeit with a hint of concern, highlighted even further when he responded with, “Whatever happens, don’t forget we’re here for you.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. _“Thanks”_? _“There’s nothing to worry about”_? _“I’ll keep that in mind”_? None of them seemed appropriate; every possible response she could come up with carried an implication that seemed either naïve or deceiving, simply because she didn’t have the truth about Cassian’s absence. So instead, she nodded again and brought another empty forkful of nothing into her mouth, chewing on more air as she continued her charade of eating.

It didn’t escape her notice that Baze continued to look at her incredulously, having seen her tray of food still full, but he, too, chose not to say anything for the rest of the meal.

 

“I’m sure you have at least _some_ idea of why you’ve been called here,” Draven said slowly.

The table in this room felt even wider this time as she sat in her chair, hands folded and resting on her lap. Her fingers twiddled restlessly- a re-direction of her nervous energy because she _still_ wasn’t sure what to expect. For comfort’s sake, she put on Cassian’s parka before heading over to see Draven- a decision met with an even sterner look from the general himself. She noted this time that the room she was asked to meet him in was rather large, meant for conference meetings of sorts. Draven, meanwhile, wasn’t sitting but _standing_ , and would have loomed over her if not for the distance between them; they were practically a continent apart thanks to the needlessly oversized table.

Jyn arched an eyebrow as her hands burrowed into the pockets of Cassian’s parka for comfort. “Why, _General_ ,” she responded in a near-sneer, “Does this mean I’ll _finally_ get some answers?”

It was supposed to unnerve him, and she was supposed to feel satisfied from it, having spent the past several hours in the dark about the circumstances behind Melshi’s solo return. And yet, Draven’s face remained the same: un-twitching, neutral (if slightly displeased), _professional_. No part of his body had turned away from her, nor had he slouched slightly from his stiff posture. His rigidity and adherence to such a professional mask made _Jyn_ feel unnerved this time, and her fists balled up in anticipation for the worst.

Draven cleared his throat. “It’s my understanding that Sergeant Melshi had filled you in on some of the details of what happened during the extraction mission.”

Jyn lifted her head so that her chin jutted ouwards, and the gesture of defiance despite their differences in eye level was not lost on the general. “Melshi came back by himself and a bunch of burnt cargo. The ship was dinged up from the return trip. No one’s filled me on anything, but it’s flattering- astounding, even- that you seem to think so highly of my observational skills.”

She stuck a hand out on the table and started drumming her fingers in feigned boredom, even as the bile slowly rose in her throat, knowing full well that the gesture would annoy him. It didn’t matter if it did, and, in fact, she _wanted_ him to be annoyed; given his roundabout way of trying to communicate with her since they all landed on Thila, she was running dangerously low on patience and started to believe he fully deserved this treatment from her.

Draven’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed just a flicker before resetting back to the eerily professional mask he’d donned when she walked in the room, and Jyn nearly smirked victoriously.

He clearly chose to ignore what Jyn had said, instead choosing to scroll on his datapad, likely perusing through files. “Shortly after you returned from your… _serendipitous display of rebellion_ , Andor had updated his files to make you his first contact in case of medical emergencies.”

Jyn nodded once, curtly, but said nothing as she continued to drum her fingers.

“As a result, it is my responsibility-“

Her chest was at odds with itself, contracting inwards to suppress the shuddered breath she was involuntarily making-

“-to inform you first that-“

She clenched her jaw to muffle the throbbing sound in her temples-

“-Captain Cassian Andor is confirmed to be deceased.”

The drumming ceased.

Her eyes, once slightly hooded with nonchalance, widened, and she sat frozen on the spot.

She spent the better part of the past few hours telling herself she’d believe it if she heard it, and that until there was an announcement, any and all possibilities were still on the table.

_Captain Cassian Andor is confirmed to be deceased._

Hearing it was much more difficult to take in than she thought, and the simple act of breathing suddenly became a painfully impossible task as her chest compressed itself even further, crunching inwards until she choked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what was that? "no evidence to prove his death," you say?
> 
> that'll happen in the next chapter, so stay tuned~


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *busts in like the kool-aid man* Did someone ask for evidence?!
> 
> Here, have the other half of the chapter! ~~but lbr this is 6.4k words while the previous chapter was like 2.3k so is it reeeeeeeeeeally considered a "half"?~~
> 
> I'm not entirely sure if this is going to be a painful read, but **here's your pre-emptive angst warning,** just in case!

_“Captain Cassian Andor is confirmed to be deceased.”_

_No._

She refused to believe it.

Jyn recovered just enough from the shock to stare Draven directly in the eye as she asked, automatically, as though it were a routine, “Cause of death?”

“Killed in action; his body was burned in the aftermath of an explosion, recovered later by Sergeant Melshi.”

“Circumstances leading up to the death?”

“The person they were sent to extract during the evacuation period had turned on the Alliance and became a double agent.”

“And then?”

Draven paused to scroll through his datapad again, presumably to access notes (it _was_ rather difficult to see from the other side of the table, after all). “According to Sergeant Melshi’s testimony and extracted security cam footage, the sergeant and the captain had arrived on the scene, disguised as Imperial officers.”

His words were quick and to the point; he recalled information in a way that felt most natural to him. Without the emotion, it was far easier for him to relay the information Jyn wanted out of him, and although each bit of news continued to get grislier as the explanation went on, she couldn’t help but consider the silver lining through his refusal to beat around the bush or sugar-coat any details.

“When they located the agent, they found him in an isolated room, where he was strapped down as though he was going to be tortured.”

_As though he was going to be tortured._

Jyn took this brief window to respond when she considered his word choice. “It was a setup,” she concluded.

Draven nodded and continued scrubbing through his notes. “His commanding officer ordered both of them apprehended, presumably in order to boost his prestige in front of a public audience, before having them executed.”

“And the double agent?”

“He was actually killed first- shot in the head by a Stormtrooper as the commanding officer left.”

She nearly scoffed and the cowardice of the double-crossing, but she felt another pang as the thought brought her back to a time she wanted to forget, and instead nodded in understanding.

“Sergeant Melshi looked for an opening to return to their ship and evacuate, under Captain Andor’s orders. As he fled for the ship, another Stormtrooper threw in a grenade inside, causing an explosion in the room.”

Jyn crossed her arms and sat up straighter, squinting an eye at Draven. “Then how can you be certain that the bodies Melshi brought back were correct? How do we know that’s Cassian?”

Draven pressed a few more buttons on his datapad. “I had a feeling you would ask.” There was a beep, and a holo appeared at the center of the table. Audio began to play, but the video only displayed static, along with the words “Video Transmission Unavailable”.

The recording was quiet, save for the soft, consistent crackle from the fires. Or was it because the microphone’s quality was compromised? Footsteps could soon be heard, followed by a labored groan and a muttered curse from Melshi as he scrambled amongst a pile of rubble.

> _“Cassian?!” Melshi cried out, his voice hoarse from the rush of having to run back in the aftermath of the explosion. “Cassian, can you hear me!?”_
> 
> _Silence, save for the crackle of flames._
> 
> _“Cassian!” he tried again, but additional bootsteps and the static noises of Stromtrooper comms could be heard. There was another noise of scrambling, and then, nothing._

The boots of the Stormtroopers got louder, until they eventually stopped. Jyn could easily hear three sets of boots walking around in the room, but couldn’t be absolutely sure of the number present in the recording. As they appeared to spread out in the room, Jyn tensed, listening as hard as she could for something, anything that sounded like Cassian.

> _A scanner noise emitted suddenly, followed by a conformational beep._
> 
> _“SK-3982,” a male Stormtrooper said. “Status: Deceased.”_
> 
> _More scanner noises._
> 
> _“JB-6520,” another Stormtrooper said, this one more effeminate. “Status: Deceased.”_
> 
> _“Kriffing hell,” the first one commented, the sound of his boots crunching under the sand of the rubble as he moved through the room. “three-one-five-seven might’ve gone overboard with the grenade.”_
> 
> _After another scanner beep, the effeminate one said, “ES-3157. Status: Deceased.”_
> 
> _Another scan was in progress, audible in the background, and the Stormtroopers seemed to have paused._
> 
> _“Huh,” the third Stormtrooper said, a female voice, as the scanner emitted another beep. “Officer Malta was implicated in this.”_

Jyn didn’t need to see a camera feed to know they all tensed up.

> _“No wonder we got sent in here to do scans. Everyone here’s burnt to a crisp- we can’t confirm any deaths without this kriffing thing.”_
> 
> _They continued scanning._
> 
> _“MB-9037. Status: Deceased.”_
> 
> _“GS-2143. Status: Deceased.”_
> 
> _“MH-2612. Status: Deceased.”_

Jyn tensed. Where was Melshi? Had he fled? Was he that well-hidden? They haven’t found him yet, nor Cassian.

But then a Stormtrooper scanned another corpse and heard an error beep.

> _“Wait a second,” the effeminate Stormtrooper said, and scanned again._
> 
> _It came back yet again with an error beep._
> 
> _“Weird,” they mumbled._
> 
> _“What’s going on?” the male Stormtrooper asked, stepping closer to them._
> 
> _“Scanners picked up an ident chip, but they’re not ours.”_
> 
> _The female Stormtrooper stepped closer to the other two. “Hang on, let me look this up.”_
> 
> _There was some more beeping, more scanning, and after a short while, she said, “Huh. Will you look at that. Some karking rebel scum was in the room!”_

Jyn’s heart dropped.

> _“Whoa! You saying that even the rebels are putting ident chips in their own people?”_
> 
> _“That explains why three-one-five-seven went gung-ho on the explosives.”_
> 
> _The effeminate Stormtrooper chuckled. “Well, if they’re going to keep getting killed like this, they’ll need the ident chips for sure.”_
> 
> _“Well,” the male one started, “Least we got ‘em. Better dead than ahead.”_

They wrapped up their scan and communicated their findings to their superior officers before being instructed to head back. As their footsteps grew fainter and fainter, Jyn could hear more shuffling from another end of the room. Melshi grunted and moved some of the fallen debris aside, and dragged a body across the floor. She could hear Melshi in near-sobs, his voice desperate and shaky as he repeated Cassian’s name, spilling apology after apology, and she reflexively turned and swiveled away from the table. Her hand balled up into a fist and pressed it against her mouth, refusing to hear any more.

The audio feed cut off, and she looked up at Draven, her eyes widened in pure disbelief. “That ident chip…“

Draven sighed heavily, pulled out a small bag, and slid it across the long table. It came to a stop mere inches from the edge of the table and Jyn eyed it as though it would jump up and sting her.

The chip was small, to be sure- she had two of her own embedded in different limbs in the event of an accident. She hesitated at first, but then picked it up gingerly. “And you’re sure this is Cassian’s?”

He nodded. “We extracted the chip from his left leg, the same place we implanted it.”

“And you scanned it for the code?”

It was obvious that Draven had expected Jyn to be _this_ thorough, because he nodded at the chip to point at it. “This is the original chip. You have the next 48 hours to dig into the code and confirm for yourself before you return it to me.”

_Of course he wouldn’t take this sitting down._

“Do you have any other questions?” Draven said, his voice wavering just slightly, and Jyn felt his composure slipping.

She stared at him for a while longer, checking his eyes, seeing how much longer it would take for him to break. Jyn wanted to see it from him- the sadness, the regret, the mourning- or else she wouldn’t even begin to forgive him for putting her through this.

But she then noticed Draven looking not at her, but the fluff of her- _Cassian’s-_ parka. She saw his eyebrows scrunch slightly as his eyelids drooped. It took another moment, but her heart clenched when she had a clue as to why he looked like that.

“Yeah,” she said softly, her lower lip quivering (in rage? in sadness? Jyn wasn’t too sure herself). “Is this why you gave me my own parka? Because you couldn’t stand to see _his_?”

Draven’s eyelids fluttered, and he inhaled deeply as he leaned back slightly in shock. He surely wasn’t expecting that question, nor was he prepared to answer it.

He didn’t need to say anything- his lips pursed and he cleared his throat as he turned his back on her. “Dismissed.”

Her mouth snapped shut and she clenched her jaw. She tried to keep her composure as she stood up from the chair, but she couldn’t help but snatch the chip from the table. “Understood. _Sir._ ”

 

“How many scanners do you actually _need_?” Bodhi asked.

Jyn took the bundle of scanners off Bodhi’s arms before making herself comfortable on the floor of her quarters. Additional cables and scanners surrounded her as she fiddled with an organization method that suited her liking. Her desk, meanwhile, was empty, save for the ident chip resting neatly in the center.

“Every single one,” she said simply. “I’m not leaving anything to chance.”

There was a pointed silence, and Bodhi drew in a breath to say something, but hesitated, and his breath held for a moment before he sighed.

“Jyn…” he started.

“Don’t,” she cut him off.

But he persisted nonetheless. “The rest of us are hit hard by Cassian’s death, too,” he said slowly.

“I’m not hit hard,” she countered.

_He’s not dead._

“I’m triple-checking this ident chip.”

“And…” Bodhi continued, “I’m getting concerned that you’re not taking this well at all.”

She hoisted a bulkier machine up on her lap and checked for cable ports to plug in to. “Like I said, not leaving anything to chance. I’m not giving up on Cassian.”

 _I can’t give up on Cassian_ was what she wanted to say, but she couldn’t admit it, at least not out loud.

Jyn made it a point to not look Bodhi in the eye as she continued to parse through the various scanners, spanning different builds and different models. She was determined to flag this chip as a false positive, that there was some kind of error, that perhaps this was someone else’s ident chip, or even a fake chip. She prided herself on her code splicing and replication- if there was an incorrect pattern, she’d notice it, down to the most subtly misplaced line of code.

There simply was no other option. She _had_ to prove Draven wrong, or else…

Finishing the thought would make it too real.

“Thanks for lending me these scanners, Bodhi,” Jyn said, still distracted with untangling the cables of some of the more archaic equipment.

There was another period of silence between them, and the only sounds in her quarters were from the duraplastic clacking on the ground as the cables were being untangled, followed by the steady hum of the climate control system.

There was a beep, and the doors slid open. “Please get some sleep,” Bodhi finally begged, his voice quieter this time. “And don’t forget that we’re here for you.”

She was sure he saw her nod as the door shut.

It took a while- she hadn’t checked her chrono for the time, however- before she had a decent setup and was ready to use every scanner in front of her to scan ident chip. K2 had returned to the room in that time, sitting next to Jyn’s desk, watching as she started checking the code of the ident chip in her hands.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” K2 asked.

Jyn shook her head. “If you can think of something, let me know. But I have to scan these codes myself. I have to catch the discrepancy with my eyes, the proof that this ident chip isn’t actually Cassian’s.”

After a beat, K2 decided to ask, “Would you like to know the probability of it being-”

“No.”

“Understandable,” he replied simply. “As the rest of the crew have likely told you, I-”

She stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder, feeling the cool metal tingle her fingers. “I know,” she said with a smile.

Was it a smile, though? It certainly felt like she smiled, but K2’s head tilted curiously, as though he couldn’t believe her expression.

She patted his chassis for reassurance, feeling his sturdy metal under her palm. It was a reminder yet again of the reality she was living in. “Thank you nonetheless.” And, to emphasize her appreciation, she held out her fist to him, and he quietly bumped it.

 

The first two scanners came up with positives:

> _//_
> 
> _ARR_ID //_
> 
> _Class: Intel // Title: CLASSIFIED // Alias: CLASSIFIED //_
> 
> _Rank: CPT //_
> 
> _Name: Cassian Andor //_
> 
> _// > _ _

Refusing to accept the results, she typed away at the keyboard in the third scanner, preparing for another code check. She had it scan through the ident chip repeatedly, using one of many hundreds of verification methods in its database, searching for any erroneous lines of code, any misplaced pieces of information, any irregularities, any-

> _//_
> 
> _ARR_ID //_
> 
> _Class: Intel // Title: CLASSIFIED // Alias: CLASSIFIED //_
> 
> _Rank: CPT //_
> 
> _Name: Cassian Andor //_
> 
> _// > _ _

Jyn sighed and leaned back on her chair. _Another positive._

She had thirteen more scanners to check, each with their own hundreds of verification systems to search the ident chip. One of them _had_ to show evidence of code tampering.

70 verification scans later, scanner number four read back 70 positive results, and she nearly slammed her fist on the table.

K2 leaned forward. “Jyn, it’s 5 am, standard time. You should consider sleeping.”

She shook her head, unwilling to tear her eyes from the fifth scanner, starting a whole new batch of scanning to ensure those would come back with a positive result as well. “Not tired.”

“Then please eat. You hadn’t even eaten dinner.”

Jyn’s response was as absentminded as it was robotic. “You don’t know that.”

He stood up, and his figure loomed over her, casting a shadow that forced Jyn to pause and actually turn to look up at him.

“You don’t think I don’t know? The likelihood of Bodhi and Chirrut asking about your well-being in face of recent developments was so high that I can’t believe I even wasted my mental resources to run the calculation in the first place. I distracted them at dinner last night to turn their attention away from you.”

Jyn blinked, unsure of what to say. The stark contrast of K2’s body to the rest of her quarters was always strikingly clear, but the lines began to blur slightly in her fatigue as she desperately fought to stay awake.

K2’s eyes flickered briefly. “I know you noticed that.”

She continued to stare blankly at him. It was true- she did notice K2 being more animated at dinner, but she hadn’t realized it was more for her benefit. If anything, she actually thought he was looking for a distraction for himself.

 _Stars_ , it was entirely possible that it was a bit of both.

“I don’t know what I can do for you,” he said more quietly, slouching a little more than he normally did. He gestured to the scanners all around the floor and her desk. “But, at the very least, you could listen to me and stop to eat, so you have energy to keep checking the codes.”

...He had a point.

Jyn’s stomach was still churning several hours later; she wanted to use that pain to her advantage by staying up to keep checking the scanners. But her eyes were drooping, her head kept lolling, and her concentration was all over the place, shifting focus this way and that as she stared at the scanner’s status. Eating, therefore, might actually be more beneficial for her to regain energy and focus.

Then again, if she felt sick to her stomach even before dinner, was there even a guarantee that she’d keep food down if she stopped to eat breakfast now?

“There’s caf in the mess. It can help you stay up,” offered K2.

That _was_ pretty tempting.

“I suppose I could stop for caf, then,” Jyn decided. It took some effort, but she did (slowly) manage to circumvent the scanners despite the wobbly steps she took.

 

The mess hall was still relatively quiet, occupied mostly by rebels who had early shifts, the ones who scanned and parsed through the comms traffic. Everyone seemed too mentally exhausted and asleep to stop and look at Jyn, which she was grateful for- if anyone tried to speak to her, even as much as a greeting, she wasn’t sure she could hold her composure.

She stopped herself from playing out any other scenarios in her head- no use in emotionally preparing for something that won’t happen.

_Because Cassian is out there somewhere._

All she had to do was eat her breakfast, down the caf, and go back into her quarters to find a scanner that would bring back a negative response. She wasn’t going to let Draven and the others tell her that Cassian was dead. Not this easily.

She sat down with her tray of food, caf in hand, and tried to eat.

Her stomach fought her with every chew of her eggs, growling angrily at the neglect it went through for so many hours. She noted how weak her stomach had gotten; going for days without food used to be normal for her thanks to her time with the Partisans, her time without them, Wobani…

It was hard to think about, now that the Alliance had actually been giving her proper rations and proper nutrition. Being fed well, fed _properly_ , brought a feeling of security, which only served to remind her of the meals she shared with Cassian.

Her heart ached at how much she missed him.

She couldn’t recall how long it’d been since she stopped chewing, but she swallowed slowly once she realized it, trying hard not to tear up at the idea that there wouldn’t be any more meals to share with him, no more sitting side-by-side, thighs pressing next to each other as they quietly ate. There wouldn’t be any more of that comforting silence, the reassurance that words weren’t needed at that moment.

Warm tears trickled down her cheeks as she lamented taking those moments for granted, when she was too flustered or unsure to actually _use_ words.

There may not be any more moments for them left.

Jyn pulled Cassian’s hood over her head to hide her face from the others and let out a slow, shuddered breath between her lips. She took the nondescript mug into her hands, using the sleeves as a guard to prevent burns, and she wafted the scent of the caf.

> _Cassian’s shoulder bumped hers as he lifted his arm to take a sip out of the steaming mug._
> 
> _Jyn was nearly bowled over by the movement. “Use your other hand, geez.”_
> 
> _He smirked as he set the cup down, smacking his lips and sighing contentedly. “Or,” he teased, “We could sit a reasonable distance from each other, rather than being pressed together like this.”_
> 
> _She glared at him as though it were the worst suggestion he could ever make._
> 
> _His laugh was gentle, and his smile was bright, if a bit shy. It was rare to hear the laugh, especially during such a mundane moment, so she savored every second of the sound of his bliss. Cassian scooted away from her, just slightly, enough for his elbow to move about freely as he drank his caf, but Jyn grabbed the edge of his jacket and tugged it closer to her without actually looking in his direction. She noted his cheeky grin through the corner of her eye as he realized she was the one trying to pull him back, and she rolled her eyes as he continued to beam at her._
> 
> _Chuckling, he scooted back towards her so that their thighs were touching again. “Better?”_
> 
> _A blush formed on her cheeks, and she nodded slowly._
> 
> _There was a hand on the other side of her hip, broad and warm. It pressed gently against her, a subtly possessive pull that made her blush even deeper. Cassian’s lips pressed against her ear and his voice was lower, but warmer than ever as he said, “Good. I like this better, too.”_
> 
> _Jyn noticed that, for the rest of that meal, he hooked his inner leg with hers, so that the insides of their feet were pressed against each other, like a mutual anchor to shore to stop her from drifting too far._

The mug of caf became ever-cloudy as tears welled up in her eyes, not quite falling down her cheeks, but threatening to do so as she recalled a moment that she’d taken for granted, having only belatedly realized that Cassian turned it into a routine he maintained for every meal they shared in relative privacy.

K2, luckily, still hadn’t said anything despite the pause in eating, but what little appetite she managed to stir up from eating was quickly vanquished at the smell of caf, so she set the mug down and pushed it away.

This, K2 took notice and responded to. “No caf?”

She shook her head, and the parka fur swayed with the movement. “I can’t. It smells too much like him.”

After a moment of hesitation, he responded with, “I can’t say I know what feels like.”

The chuckle that came out of her throat still carried some amusement despite the bitter overtone. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Sorry.”

Jyn continued to try and eat in silence, chewing slowly and regaining some energy as more and more people filtered in for breakfast. But the growing crowd was starting to make her nervous- she didn’t want so many eyes on her, if they even caught wind of what happened. She didn’t want their concern, much less their pity and shallow sorrows, nor was she interested in having them watch her cry over her meal.

K2 seemed to sense her discomfort by the increased traffic, and he leaned forward. “We’re nearing the hour that the other crew members will arrive at the mess hell,” he warned. “I suggest taking this food with you, unless you plan to eat the rest of it in a few mouthfuls.”

Nodding, she stood up with her tray and headed towards her quarters with K2 by her side.

The mug of caf was left behind, getting colder with time.

 

The fifth scanner did not yield the results she wanted:

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_
> 
> _ARR_ID //_
> 
> _Class: Intel // Title: CLASSIFIED // Alias: CLASSIFIED //_
> 
> _Rank: CPT //_
> 
> _Name: Cassian Andor //_
> 
> _// > _ _

Nor did the sixth, seventh, or eighth scanner.

Jyn sighed in aggravation, and she pulled Cassian’s hood over her head again as she let her head land with a thud on the desk.

The frustration was beginning to eat at her, and the ninth scanner left her seething.

She hadn’t even realized it was well into lunch hours- K2 had, at some point, left, and then returned with a few baked goods (from where, she wouldn’t ask). They still lay at a far corner of her desk, untouched; she promised him that she’d get to them later, when she was actually hungry.

Jyn refused to look at the chrono out of fear of finding out how much time had passed since her last “meal”, but she decided to maybe stop and at least use the ‘fresher after checking all the verification scans the tenth scanner had to offer:

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

_No._

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

_Why?_

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

_Still?_

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

_Come on..._

“Jyn, please take a break,” K2 pleaded.

“I took one,” she replied simply. “I had a ‘fresher break, then went back to work.”

He was _not_ impressed. “It’s past dinner hours, and you hadn’t touched the food I brought earlier. Take a break and eat something.”

“No,” she insisted, but her insistence appeared far from strong- her body was slouched, her voice a bit listless, and her eyes were pink with fatigue as her eyelids drooped even further. Her mouth hung open just slightly, and had been for several hours, judging by how dry her lips and throat had gotten.

“Jyn-”

“No!” she yelled. The yell was frenzied, and her eyes were wide with panic. She was at the edge of her composure- her throat started to throb, giving her air while threatening to choke her to death, her heart was racing, and tears started welling up again. “I can’t take a break, K2, I can’t, I just _can’t_ …”

Jyn had to stop herself from saying anything more, lest she break into sobs.

“Jyn,” he said again, and she almost regretted giving him the chance to speak- the sadness and hurt in his voice was just as hard to hear as the screaming in her mind. “No one needs to run an analysis to figure out that this is Cassian’s ident chip. And-”

His voice began crackling, and he paused briefly as his optics flickered. “-the more tests you run on these scanners,” he continued with a normal voice, “the more positive results you’ll see. Each of those results will just serve to hurt you.”

Breathing became so difficult that Jyn forced herself to remain calm by breathing heavily through her nostrils to maintain control and stop herself from hyperventilating in anger and frustration. She gripped the seat of her chair, squeezing the bars as hard as she could to redirect her energy elsewhere, to remind herself that this is not a nightmare, that she was, in fact, dealing with reality. The tips of her fingers grew white and slowly numbed themselves.

“You’re my friend, Jyn, and Cassian said-”

Jyn sniffled. She was afraid of what he’d say next, but not because it would be unreasonably snarky. Rather, she was afraid of finding out how much Cassian’s absence was affecting them both.

In the end, another part of her had to know: “...Said _what_?”

There was a prolonged silence as they stared each other down. K2’s optics fixated on the parka, then shifted back to her for a moment or two before looking at the scanners scattered about. Many of them had been set aside once they were used, creating a haphazard pile off to the side, but the final scanner still lay neatly on the floor behind her, untouched until the final round of verification scans.

“Never mind,” he conceded. “I shouldn’t say.”

His chassis whirred quietly as he turned to look at the door. “You’ve skipped dinner as well.”

Jyn nodded- she knew what this meant: _Your absence will cause a concern. The others will be checking in on you soon._

“What do you want to do?”

The fourteenth scanner beeped affirmatively: _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

She sighed. “Just...please, Kay, just let me do this,” she asked, sliding the scanner number 14 aside to place the fifteenth and final one on the desk. “I know the chances that this is a real ident chip is incredibly high, but I just need to cover all my bases. It’s-”

Jyn paused. Dare she say it?

“It’s the least I can do for him,” she said more quietly.

K2 hadn’t said anything in response, but she heard his optics whir, a shift in his vision.

“If there’s even the smallest of chances that this ident chip fails even a _single_ verification scan, then I need to be there to see it. It’s all I’ve got left for him- I have to give him everything I can, even when he’s...” She swallowed a whimper when she noticed her voice wavering.

_...gone._

It seemed that K2 decided to run simulations in his head for the best next action to take. When he arrived at the most optimal course of action, his optics stopped flickering, and he straightened back up again. “I’ll stand at the door and block the lock to prevent anyone from coming in. I won’t budge until you tell me to, so you can have all the privacy you need.”

Jyn started to wonder if she deserved to even _have_ someone else in her life that was this considerate. Still unable to express her gratitude in word- _were_ there even words for something like this?- she knocked gently on his chassis yet again, and K2 nodded in acknowledgement before turning for the door.

The doors slid shut, and she rolled her shoulders. Pulling the hood back, she flexed her fingers, and got to typing.

> _Verification Scan 001 of 251: 19% Complete_

Jyn held her breath.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

It was hard not to pound on the desk in anger.

> _Verification Scan 050 of 251: 23% Complete_

She clutched her mother’s kyber necklace, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. Cassian’s scent was even more subtle than before at the sleeves, and it caused her to squeeze the necklace harder, as if tightening her grip would actually make the Force give her what she wanted.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

A mix of desperation and fear stirred in her chest as she started to realize what she was losing.

> _Verification Scan 076 of 251: 49% Complete_

She thought of his hand in her hair, soothing her to sleep.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

If only she appreciated them more.

> _Verification Scan 083 of 251:_ 62% Complete

She thought of how he melted under her touch, how a single finger-press lifted his tension and stress away.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

If only she worked those knots out harder, rather than given up when she grew tired.

> _Verification Scan 107 of 251: 39% Complete_

She remembered the moments they’d walk together, pinkies linked, arms swinging gently as they wandered through the streets. Even the shadiest of alleys felt safer with him by her side as they’d furtively scan the environment for any potential dangers.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

That sense of safety started to crumble.

If only she squeezed his pinky just a little bit harder and given him the reassurance he gave her.

> _Verification Scan 142 of 251: 87% Complete_

She remembered the times Cassian wake up with a jolt, catching his breath at the nightmares that haunted him, how she’d gently scratch at the nape of his neck to calm him back to sleep.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

If only she soothed him longer, more often- there wouldn’t be anything to scratch at anymore.

> _Verification Scan 179 of 251: 5% Complete_

She thought of how pointed his nose was, how easy it was to kiss the tip of it, and how red his ears got from it.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

If only she kissed him more often- now the memory began to haunt her.

> _Verification Scan 235 of 251: 73% Complete_

She remembered how warm he was when they slept together, remembering how cramped it would be with the both of them on it- but she never needed a blanket when he was with her. She made herself at home as she snuggled in.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

Her bed was suddenly too big, too cold, too foreign to her.

If only she took the effort to line up their schedules more to ensure more nights together.

> _Verification Scan 247 of 251: 94% Complete_

She thought of his voice, his deliberate word choice, how there was so much weight carried in the things he said, how they could weigh on her like a comforting blanket.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

If only she took better care to remember the sound of his voice, now distantly fading echoes in her head as the weeks passed since the evacuation.

> _Verification Scan 251 of 251: 16% Complete_

_“Jyn, I-”_

The tears welled up as Cassian’s hesitation rang in her mind.

> _NO ERRORS FOUND //_

The moment had passed, the chance was gone.

> _//_
> 
> _ARR_ID //_
> 
> _Class: Intel // Title: CLASSIFIED // Alias: CLASSIFIED //_
> 
> _Rank: CPT //_
> 
> _Name: Cassian Andor //_
> 
> _// > _ _

So was Cassian.

Jyn let out a cry that even she couldn’t recognize as her own, and the status report continued to blink at her, a shade of green that took her back to the War Room when Cassian first interrogated her, asking about her father, and she remembered every single loss of everyone she’d ever loved. The relentless violence ripped her away from the things that brought her the most amount of joy. It didn’t matter who did the killing, did it? Alliance or Empire, Empire or Alliance; no matter what she did, or what steps she took to protect herself, there was always something around to hurt her.

For once, she wanted to take that chance again, most especially with Cassian.

Of course, it's always the ones you love most that somehow hurt you the most, even if it isn't their fault.

“Did the scan finish?” K2 called out from the other side of the door. “What was the result?”

Jyn's shoulders continued to shake as she let out a low, mourning whine and the tears streamed uncontrollably.

They both knew that was enough of a response.

“I'll stay here to give you space,” K2 declared with a steady rhythm, but even he couldn't hide the crackling in his voice again, the sound clear enough to her from the thick durasteel door.

Not wanting to throw the scanners (and, by extension, Cassian's ident chip) at the wall in a wave of fury, Jyn instead opted to climb into bed and weep into her pillow.

The galaxy found a way yet again to shuffle the cards and make sure she was alone. And, as ironic as it was, she decided to let it happen for now- she didn't want to be near anyone, didn't want to hear them talk, didn't want to be fed soothing lies about the reality and gravity of the circumstances, even _if_ she was one of the last to accept them. Her cries bounced around the empty room, seeming emptier by the second with each sobbing breath she took, a near-scream with the staccato of a whimper.

“Jyn?” Bodhi called out, pounding on the door.

“Please leave,” K2 said simply. “All of you. Please leave. Leave her be.”

She closed her eyes and was grateful for K2’s willingness to intervene.

“We need to be there for you!” Bodhi cried out, and Jyn could hear the sounds of Bodhi struggling to paw at her keypad and K2 resisting him. The chassis knocked about, and Bodhi groaned as he was pulled back and pushed down to the floor.

“I'm sorry, Bodhi, but you and the Guardians must leave,” K2 declared firmly.

“She needs to be with family,” Baze gruffed. “You are not one to dictate that.”

A whir of K2's joints indicated movement, and there was a brief silence that even Jyn noticed- she wasn't sure when she stopped sobbing to hear the confrontation outside.

“I am here to help her by giving her what she needs, and what she needs is space, at her request.”

“Pain is a difficult thing to navigate,” Chirrut said placatingly. “Although all is as the Force wills it, it wills us to come together and-”

Jyn's fists clenched. _If all is as the Force wills it-_

“If all is as the Force wills it, then the Force wills for Cassian to die and Jyn to suffer,” the droid concluded. “Unfortunately for you, the Force and I have different priorities.”

She swore she could hear Chirrut chuckle, but was it in amusement? In an acceptance of logical defeat? Was there something more to it that she couldn't see?

“I see you're taking this far more calmly than the rest of us,” Baze said a bit too knowingly.

“Yeah,” Bodhi chimed in. “Out of all of us, how are you able to stand here stoically and tell us off so _easily?_ ”

It wasn't a malicious question by any means, but Bodhi did have a point, and the area quieted once more.

“Because,” K2 started, his voice filtering through the mesh like continued crackling static, “Cassian said I had to.”

Jyn had always wondered what that meant, and she lifted her head just enough to turn her gaze towards the door.

“He told me, 'Be there for Jyn. _You have to be there for Jyn._ ’”

Her eyes widened.

“He said it before Scarif, and he said it again before the evacuation.”

 _“I'll be there for you, Jyn,”_ she distinctly remembered him saying at the hangar on Yavin IV, before they made one of the biggest leaps in their lives, risking everything for what was more or less a suicide mission.

“Cassian said I had to,” K2 said again, and the words crackled and warped even more, distorting themselves to the point where Jyn understood the noises to be his attempt at maintaining composure.

Cassian's death hit K2 the hardest- he simply had no programming to show it as outwardly as she did.

She curled up, hugging Cassian's parka more snugly against her body. Her stomach churned again and the room began to spin faster than her thoughts, her feelings, her regrets racing through her mind.

“Jyn?” K2 called a short while later, knocking quietly at the durasteel between them.

Jyn sniffled in response.

“If it's alright with you,” he said, with undulating static in his voice, “I'd like to shut down for the night. My programming, it...it keeps running and...and it won't _stop_.”

She knew exactly how that felt.

“I'll still be here, blocking the keypad, but if you need me, you can reboot me,” he offered.

He was offering too much.

It was more than she deserved.

The pain he was feeling was more than _he_ deserved, really.

“Good night, Kay,” she said back, and as she heard his systems prepare for shutdown, she pulled the hood over her eyes and let the tears continue to streak down her face and soak the sheets below.

She was angry. She was hurt. She was heartbroken. She wanted to scream at Draven. She wanted to scream at herself. She wanted to scream at the galaxy for taking, and taking, and taking. All she wanted was a safe haven, however small it was.

Cassian was her home, and her home was destroyed.

All that remained was her inner cave.

Jyn crawled back in, just like when she was 8 years old, trying to shake the lantern back to life, crying, _waiting_.

The hatch to the inner cave shut firmly, and she was in darkness.

Quietly, she begged.

“Please come back.”

“Cassian, I miss you.”

“Come back to me, _please_...”

It didn't matter how long she waited in that cave and begged for his return.

Much like with her parents so many years ago, he couldn't come back for her.


	8. Chapter 8

Jyn woke up with a pounding headache and a sore throat.

How long had she slept?

 _Probably not long enough_ , she figured as she rubbed her temple, groaning at how heavy and stiff her limbs had become overnight.

The knock on the door wasn’t any better- the sound of it boomed in her head tenfold, echoing and bouncing aggressively, and she had to hold back an agonized plea to whoever was at the door to stop knocking.

“Jyn?” K2 called gently from the other side. “Are you awake yet?”

“Yeah,” she called out with an unsurprisingly strained voice.

There was a noticeable silence, followed by, “How are you feeling?”

_Oh._

Jyn looked to her right and saw the ident chip scanners strewn about the floor and her desk.

_Right._

Indeed, they were haphazardly placed, with no prevalent method of order and tidiness, as though a whirlwind had been summoned to wreak havoc on her quarters. It was an appropriate metaphor for the mess in her head; last night was so surreal, coming and going in such a blur, that she was convinced she just woke up from an intense nightmare.

Neither the galaxy nor the Force were kind enough to grant her even that, it seemed.

“Jyn,” K2 called out again. “I’d like to come in; are you decent?”

“Oh,” she said, albeit faintly. When she realized how meek her voice came out- _was her voice ever this meek in her life?_ \- she cleared her throat, wincing at its dryness. “I’m dressed; you can come in.”

The doors slid open and K2 entered the room as if nothing was wrong, but he paused once his optics focused on her, and Jyn could hear the motors of his optical lenses whirring and adjusting themselves; he was taking in her appearance and making assessments.

She sighed. “What?”

“You’re not decent,” he noted bluntly.

Jyn shrugged. “I have clothes on,” she reasoned, bringing her knees to her chest as she sat on the bed. She began to fiddle with her fingernails, picking at the skin around it to distract herself from anything else, anything to get him to stop talking about the events of yesterday.

“Those are last night’s clothes. Please change into a new set; we have a meeting soon.”

She looked at K2 and blinked, her stare hollower than the hole in her chest that had been punched out the night before.

_There isn’t really much of a point for me to attend, is there?_

_They don’t have anything substantial for me to do._

_I’m just a scandoc forger; take the docs and give me the next pile._

The thoughts never manifested into speech.

 

The rest of the day was a blur.

Jyn managed to get out of bed out of K2’s insistence, but aside from refusing to go to the meeting, she didn’t remember much else. She probably ate. She probably said hi to people. She was pretty sure she wandered the base, just for a change of scenery. But what scenery did she see, exactly? That, she couldn’t remember.

No sooner had the day started did it end, and as she sat back down on her bunk, she tried to collect her memories for the day- what she’d seen, what she’d done, what she’d eaten- but kept drawing a blank. All she could do was stare distantly at nothing, occasionally following a speck of dust twirling quietly in beams of light here and there, vaguely admiring their ability to float lazily without a care in the galaxy.

She heard a faint beep, and a dimly lit blip appeared at the corner of her vision. It was something her mind registered almost immediately, but the disconnect between mind and body was so vast that it wasn’t for a good several seconds that she finally twisted her body to reach back and check the datapad.

The screen was covered in unanswered notifications: 10 unread messages, 13 missed comm pages, 20 updates to databases she was given clearance for, and 7 unopened mail.

Jyn cleared them all without bothering to look at them.

Another notification popped up- 6 unread messages from Bodhi.

> [0702]  
>  Rook: How are you feeling?  
>  [0930]  
>  Rook: You missed the meeting, but I took notes for you  
>  Rook: You can look at them later, if you’d like.  
>  [1127]  
>  Rook: Didn’t see you at breakfast! Let’s get lunch.  
>  [1449]  
>  Rook: Just saw you wandering through the hangar bay, did you see me? Tried to say hi, but you just kept walking  
>  Rook: Thought you might’ve seen me, but I guess you were just looking outside.  
>  [1856]  
>  Rook: You weren’t at dinner  
>  Rook: Please tell me Kay brought food to you instead  
>  Rook: I don’t think you’ve eaten all day.  
>  [2233]  
>  Rook: Did you make it back to your quarters alright?

She wasn’t in any danger; none of them were, thanks to the lack of off-planet assignments. What could possibly happen to her that would cause Bodhi to act this worried?

Jyn considered putting the datapad down without answering it, until she received another message from him:

> [2235]  
>  Rook: Jyn, please  
>  Rook: Please answer me  
>  Rook: I need to make sure you’re alright.  
>  Erso: I’m fine  
>  Erso: At my quarters  
>  Rook: Please tell me you ate.

Jyn winced. If she hadn’t actually sat with Bodhi to eat at any point in the day, it was entirely possible that she hadn’t eaten at all. But at no point did she ever feel hungry; the thought of eating simply slipped past her.

Still, it was important to Bodhi, and she didn’t want to let him down.

So she lied.

> [2239]  
>  Erso: I did.  
>  Rook: That’s not a lie, is it?  
>  Erso: K2 brought me food.  
>  Rook: Oh okay, thank goodness  
>  Rook: How are you feeling?

Jyn’s fingers hovered over the pad, hesitating. Engaging in conversation was the last thing she wanted, but Bodhi seemed to think better of it. If she was honest, she was looking forward to just returning to silence, and formed her responses to Bodhi to encourage that.

…Assuming he’d take the hint, anyway.

> [2242]  
>  Erso: I’m fine  
>  Rook: Okay, THAT has to be a lie.  
>  Erso: …Really, I’m fine  
>  Rook: The fact that you looked like a wandering ghost all day today tells me otherwise.  
>  Erso: Bodhi, seriously, I’m fine
> 
> [2258]  
>  Rook: Alright.  
>  Rook: I won’t pry anymore.  
>  Rook: But if you need a shoulder to cry on, just hit me up on the comms.  
>  Erso: I don’t need a shoulder to cry on. It’s fine  
>  Rook: Jyn, please, just promise me.

Her hands began to tremble at Bodhi’s offer, and part of her wanted to reach out and accept it, to lean on his shoulder and cry. But just before she could think about writing a message to that effect, the more vulnerable part of her snapped at her: _You cried alone when your parents left._

_It’s safer to cry alone when you can._

_But_ , another part of her reasoned, _you cried when you saw Papa on the holo at Jedha, and again at Eadu- both times, you weren’t alone_.

It was true- Cassian had witnessed her at her near-worst, despite having just barely met. He was there when she cried, and that, she argued, wasn’t so bad.

_Cassian isn’t here anymore, though._

It would have been inaccurate to say, in this moment, that Jyn was alone. She had the rest of her family around her, Bodhi being among them. But with Cassian dead, his absence further highlighted just how close Jyn held him to her heart. He’d become her primary pillar of support.

That pillar of support was gone now- it had crumbled and burnt down to ashes before being blown away by the winds of whatever unforgiving planet he and Melshi were on for their assignment.

She wasn’t alone, but she certainly _felt_ alone.

And, right now, all she wanted was to _be_ alone.

> [2301]  
>  Erso: If I need a shoulder to cry on, I’ll come to you first  
>  Erso: But I’m fine. Really

Jyn was almost certain that Bodhi didn’t believe her, but she had to give it _some_ effort, and then hope that Bodhi would drop it.

Luckily, he did.

> [2305]  
>  Rook: Alright, if you insist  
>  Rook: but you know where my quarters are if you need anything  
>  Erso: Will do

She tossed her datapad aside and lay back on the bunk. It was only then, when Cassian’s parka hoodie gently flopped over her face and the fur tickled her nose, that she realized she’d actually worn it all day, in spite of the heat. But before she could dwell on her increased attachment to the parka, there was a dull knock at the door.

“Jyn?” It was K2.

She still didn’t feel like answering.

“Seeing as it’s almost lights out, I’d like to make sure your hair is braided before you go to bed.”

It sounded as though K2 was already over Cassian’s death and gone back to resuming a routine.

 _How lucky of him_ , she thought bitterly.

“It’s fine,” she called back. “You don’t need to. But you don’t have to stay outside if you don’t want to.”

Normally at this point, K2 would enter the room and make himself comfortable. On some days, he’d come in before she was even decent, completely unaware that sometimes it’s better not to walk in to one’s quarters when they were in the middle of zipping up their trousers.

This time, however, he didn’t, and there was a long pause before he spoke up again. “…I need to.”

Jyn wasn’t sure if K2 was trying to say that he needed to stay outside or that he needed to braid her hair, but when the durasteel walls couldn’t completely conceal the crackle and warp at the downward tone of K2’s sentence, she considered the possibility that perhaps K2’s desire to adhere to a routine _was_ his method of coping. Which, admittedly, was still a world of a lot better than her method of shoving people away.

This could be beneficial for them both.

“Alright,” she said loud enough for him to hear. “I’m decent- you can come in.”

A few short beeps later, the doors slid open and the sound of K2’s heavy metal footsteps slowly clanked in towards her. He paused and took in the sight of her quarters, not bothering to hide the fact that he was scrutinizing the still-messy layout of the chip scanners Jyn hadn’t bothered to clean up.

“I’ll clean it up tomorrow when I turn in the ident chip,” Jyn mumbled preemptively.

He took the next moment to observe Jyn, and she watched on as his optics continued to focus and refocus on her and the scanners.

“I’m sure you will,” he said simply, and for once, that sentence didn’t come with his signature snark.

Oddly, it felt encouraging.

When Jyn finally changed into her sleepwear for the night, she handed K2 the hair ties needed for the braids, and the routine resumed. K2’s fingers, as usual, were cold to the touch, but the pressure continued to be soothing. She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh of contentment as she tried to shoo away the mess in her head.

If there was anything she tried to learn from Chirrut (aside from fighting methods, of course), it was about the importance of mindfulness and its role in meditation. _“Mindfulness is key!”_ he’d tout, owing his visibly low-stress approach to life to the method. She had to admit, it did make her a bit jealous that he could carry himself so lightly without appearing unaware or uncaring about the world around him, but, as it turned out, clearing out one’s mind was a great deal harder than she initially thought, and as much as she wanted to practice this right now, the shock of yesterday shook her so much that it was impossible to keep her mind blank.

In fact, her efforts were a reminder of why she needed to clear her mind in the first place, and her awareness of the situation shoved her into an emotional cycle of grief, causing her shoulders to shake again, a sign of a restrained cry.

To cover up the action, Jyn removed Cassian’s parka and set it aside, just as K2 fastened the final elastic in her hair, but her charade wasn’t necessary- he quickly stood up and started walking away.

Whipping around, she was met with the view of K2’s back. “Where are you going?”

“Outside.”

It left Jyn dumbfounded. “You…you don’t have to go outside,” she said quietly. “You can stay in here and recharge.”

He remained unmoving, considering her words. Then his shoulders slouched, just subtly, enough for Jyn to catch.

“I can’t stand to be around you for too long.”

The words stung.

Did he really dislike her that much?

Was Cassian’s death sending him in such a spiral that he was torn between carrying out Cassian’s last request and acting on his own disdain for her from all those months ago?

Was that the only reason why they were friends in the first place?

“Not right now, anyway,” he clarified, and the crackle in his voice returned. “Not with all these reminders.” Without facing her, he gestured to the scanners and the parka Draven had gifted Jyn, which hung forlornly on the wardrobe’s door.

As the doors slid shut behind him, she heard his gears whir once more to block the door and prepare for shutdown, and It was then that she realized: K2 had been absent for most of her day- a deviation from their established norm- and he refused to look at her for long periods of time once he finally returned to her quarters.

It wasn’t that K2 disliked her- in fact, she was willing to bet that looking at her reminded him too much of the companion that was long-gone from their lives.

The silence finally returned, just like Jyn wanted, she couldn’t find it in her to welcome it anymore. The air thickened and choked her, and the subtle white noise from the climate systems created a numbing buzz in her head that she couldn’t shake. She lay back down on the bed, trying once more to clear her mind, but the dull, heavy buzzing wouldn’t stop shuffling the memories of last night back into the forefront of her thinking.

Instinctively, she rolled onto her side, facing the direction she always did when she felt restless.

But instead of finding the comfort she habitually expected, all she found was the parka she tossed aside, a crumpled lump on the bed, without a particular human filling it.

She clutched the sheet underneath her, curling up as her chest heaved.

> _“I can’t sleep,” she said to a sleeping Cassian._
> 
> _She should’ve known he was fast asleep, dead tired from the assignment he’d finally returned from, and yet she was silly enough to talk to him anyway. Regardless, she kept her eyes on him, studying the peaceful features of his face, committing the image to memory and burning it in the recesses of her mind as his chest rose and fell to a steady rhythm. It took every ounce of self-restraint she had to not stroke his cheek with the back of her finger._
> 
> _The self-restraint wasn’t enough, however, and she let her index finger drag lightly against the flow of his beard, feeling each individual strand of hair on his chin. She reveled in how soft it was despite the rough and haggard edges of his outward demeanor, one of the contradictions she grew to love so much about him the more time they spent together._
> 
> _Perhaps she was too feather-like in her actions- Cassian stirred under her touch and she froze._
> 
> _There was a moment where the hairs at her neck stood on end, worried that she might have woken him up. But before she could speak up and apologize for waking him, Cassian had swung his arm over her and pulled her in tightly, nearly choking from his clinginess._
> 
> _“…Cassian?”_
> 
> _In lieu of an actual response, he sighed deeply, a comforted swoon of sorts, and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest resumed._
> 
> _The hug was warm and felt like love- the kind of love that greeted you whenever you came back all day from tending the crops with the helper droids, the kind of love that assured you that you were safe, the kind of love that felt like the home she’d gone so much of her life without._
> 
> _He hugged her as though he considered her his home._
> 
> _Jyn breathed him in and clutched his tunic in return, squirming a little to make herself more comfortable in his sleepy embrace._
> 
> _Despite being trapped in his arms, she felt liberated in his comfort, like she could finally fly or run laps in her dreams, and her eyes grew heavy as sleep finally took her the way it did Cassian- in safety._

She reached out tentatively for the parka, curling her shaking fingers around the front collar. Her breath shuddered as the tears came back the same way they did last night, almost on cue, while she remembered what the Force had stolen from her. For all her bravado and insistence to Bodhi that she was okay, Jyn began to quietly admit that perhaps she really wasn’t alright after all, and with each breath she took, her chest felt more and more constricted by the pain of her loss.

Her grip around the parka tightened in response, as though squeezing harder would encourage the comfort to return, but even with Cassian’s scent, now even fainter than ever, it just wasn’t the same anymore. The fabric was too cold, the bed too empty, and the air too thick with memories she couldn’t handle reliving anymore as she cried herself to sleep for the second night in a row.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people add periods to the end of their texts to hide the fact they're lying about something. Jyn is one of them.


	9. Chapter 9

Jyn woke up close to midday, feeling less groggy than the day before, but only relatively so; the heaviness in her chest persisted, and her shoulders felt weighed down from Cassian’s parka, less due to the actual weight of the clothing than the weight of what it represented.

She looked again at the mess of scanners, untouched from the previous two nights. Specks of dust began to settle and nest in places over the plastics of the machinery, the screens looking a bit duller from the sheen of cloth particles in the air.

Her datapad beeped, and her response to the stimulus, luckily, was better today. A reminder blazoned across the screen: _Return Equipment, Ident Chip to Draven._

Jyn stood up from her bunk, and the parka fell easily from her shoulders. She was still hovering between two states: one of consciousness, awareness, and deliberate actions, and one of the thousand-yard stare and an out-of-body, auto-run functionality. She was as mentally present as she was absent, and it wasn’t clear to her if she should force herself to focus, or if it even mattered at all.

The thought distracted her so much that once she became self-aware again, she was drying her hair with a towel, her body still dripping wet from the ‘fresher, which she somehow managed to turn off during her reverie. It wasn’t until she stepped back out into her quarters that she realized the room was still empty- K2 might have been waiting for a cue to be let back in. So, despite being inside the room, she rapped gently on the durasteel door. “Kay? You can come in if you want- if you’re ready,” she corrected herself.

It didn’t take long for the doors to slide open to reveal her tall, dark friend. He regarded the state of her quarters- not that there was much of a change to catalogue- then looked down at her. “I assume you read the notification on your datapad.”

Jyn nodded. “I need a cart to return all the equipment.”

“I’m sure we can take one from Baze,” K2 responded with a return nod. “He’s the one carting the heavy artillery, after all.”

She exhaled sharply through her nose, the closest it could get to a chuckle. “Yeah, no kidding. Let’s go.”

 

This must be a trap. Surely it must be.

“Good to have you sitting and eating with us again, Little Sister,” Baze said with all the knowingness and warmth he could muster, to which Jyn could only respond with a grumble.

She slumped in her chair at the mess hall, staring down her cup of caf and the sad bun next to it. Jyn still wasn’t hungry- not truly, no- but Baze had refused to lend her his cart, or any of the available carts, which were somehow all under his watch, until she sat down with the rest of the crew for lunch.

It was a clever ruse, without a doubt, but she wasn’t sure who to blame for the setup. Was it K2, for suggesting that she see Baze about the cart? Or did Baze come up with the plan just as the two had arrived at his shop? Perhaps the entire squad had spent yesterday coming up with ways to get her to be surrounded by people, to watch over her after her alleged “ghostly appearance” the other day. It wasn’t what she wanted, though- she wanted to be as alone as she possibly could, and just withdraw from everyone unless she absolutely had to. Apparently, Baze and the others had a different priority.

“Hey,” Melshi mumbled drearily as he approached the table, lunch in hand and ready to sit with the others, but he froze on the spot when Jyn looked up at him. She observed how his eyes widened slightly and his jaw slackened just a bit, clearly unable to respond to her presence at the table.

In fairness, Jyn was surprised to see him as well. He, too, looked worse for the wear. His eyes shifted this way and that, assessing, determining what to do next, or even what to say next. She held his gaze, partly because she wanted to know what he was going to do or say in response to her presence, but mostly because she just couldn’t tear her eyes away from his. His widened eyes were a reminder of the state of shock he was in just days prior, and she could still remember the sobs and apologies he poured onto her.

Melshi looked increasingly uncomfortable, and he was still unable to take a seat with the crew. Jyn took the opening as her cue to leave.

“It’s fine," she said quickly, and she stood abruptly, letting the chair legs scrape roughly against the smoothed concrete. “I was about to leave anyway.”

Jyn looked at Baze. “I’ll just borrow a cart from someone else.” Turning to Melshi, she gestured to her seat and said, “Please, sit.”

She walked away before anyone else could react, but she _could_ hear K2 turn to Baze and say in a (poorly) hushed volume: “Didn’t I say that wasn’t going to work?”

 

Jyn worried that it would take some effort to wrangle a cart at first, but she managed to find a mechanic in the hangar and convince them to lend her one rather easily. She started off with a simple excuse- “Baze took Rook’s cart”- but before she could continue with the story she fabricated during her search, the mechanic took the bait readily, raising a hand to stop her from explaining any further before unloading the cart.

“Say no more,” they said with a smile, apparently not a stranger to such a scenario, and got back to gingerly taking their supplies off the cart and placing them just as neatly on a rag they placed on the ground in a neat square.

She sighed, relieved. “Thank the stars. I just need to get this over with; I’ll return the cart as soon as I’m done with it.”

They didn’t say anything in return, but it was an amicable silence. Jyn marveled at how methodically the mechanic conducted themself- between the chaos of war and the resulting round-the-chrono hustle and bustle of the Alliance, they acted as though ship maintenance was a strongly loved hobby rather than a fast-paced profession. Jyn had gone so long with her mind racing between one thought and the next that the mechanic’s leisurely pace was nearly a foreign idea to her. Being grounded should have meant appreciating leisure, having been forced into such a slow life in the first place, but it instead made her mind race faster than ever as she became hyper-aware of her circumstances in comparison, working out the things she could do to fill her time (at least, up until Melshi returned).

The longer she watched them, however, the more envious she became of their ability to just slow down, look at peace, and be in the moment, especially knowing that this interaction was the result of a major moment she wished never happened.

Finally, just as Jyn was about to be too entranced by the calm and steady sorting, the mechanic spoke up. “You’re a little more awake today,” they remarked. “You were really distraught for the past couple of days, and…” their train of thought dissipated into the air as they tidied up the last of their tools from the cart and gave it a quick wipe-down. Standing up, they dusted their knees off of the dirt below them, and gently nudged the cart towards Jyn. “Well, it’s just nice to see you a bit more energized.” Their skin let off a subtle shimmer as they beamed with pride at handing off a clean cart to a colleague.

Nervous, Jyn curled her fingers around the cart. She wondered if the mechanic was going to get too comfortable and ask her about the reason behind her distress. Talking about the past few days was too soon, too intimidating. Nonetheless, she thanked the mechanic with a smile and a polite nod before turning away. She took one, two steps, when-

“Actually,” she said, turning slowly around to talk in their direction. “How do you do it?”

They tilted their head and blinked curiously. “Do what?”

“We’re in a war. But you…you work as though you’ve never seen one, been in one. That level of peace- how do you do it?”

The mechanic smiled. But it wasn’t out of joy- it was out of amusement, as though they’d just broken character in a play. “I think you’re mistaken- I’m always angry. When I joined the Rebellion, I was the angriest I’d ever been. But the peace you see on my face is a product of that.”

Jyn blinked, staring in curiosity at their words.

“Well, _kaaseh_ ,” they started, code-switching to their native tongue- to which Jyn nodded in comprehension- before seamlessly switching back to Basic, “Everyone feeds off each other’s projections. It’s easy for someone to feel panicked when everyone around them acts in a panic. Same with anger. Same with sadness. Same with hope.”

 _Hope._ A shiver ran up her spine at the mere mention of the word.

“Actually,” they continued, “I can’t remember who I heard it from, but I’ve heard a few rebels mention someone who’d always say that ‘Rebellions are built on hope’. It struck a chord with me, so since then I’ve decided to twist it and control my anger and redirect it so that I can project peace and hope to those around me. I find that we tend to work better as a whole if our minds are in that state.”

Jyn pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth to keep a straight face, not wanting to falter at the returning memories.

“Obviously, I don’t think I’m the one behind your mood improvement,” they laughed heartily. “It’s just nice to see that you’re getting back on your feet from whatever was bringing you down. We have to live to see tomorrow to keep fighting.”

_We have to keep fighting._

Jyn nodded, mulling over their words. “I see. Thanks again; I’ll see to it that your cart is returned.”

“If you can’t find me, just return the cart to Rook, and he’ll make sure it gets back to me,” the mechanic waved casually.

Jyn tried to stay as calm as possible and keep her walk as casual as possible while returning to her quarters, but the mechanic’s response lingered in her mind:

_Rebellions are built on hope._

_We tend to work better if we have hope._

_We have to live to keep fighting._

Whispers and traces of Cassian were more prevalent in the Rebellion than she realized. Cassian was gone. But, on the other hand, he wasn’t _truly_ gone. Parts of him had sunk into the cracks in the surface of the Rebellion, and even if most rebels couldn’t figure out the source of it, Jyn recognized the presence as being unmistakably him.

As happy as Jyn was to see his legacy and spirit live on through the subtle marks he left on the others, however, it was unfair that she seemed to be the only one to see him everywhere but in front of her. And, as she punched in the code to her quarters and entered the room, Jyn stopped making any effort to hide her tears. She cried bitterly in the privacy of her room, quietly picking up each scanner one-by-one, remembering the confirmation messages she saw in each of them when she scanned Cassian’s ident chip. Cassian was everywhere and nowhere at once, but the _nowhere_ was all Jyn could seem to focus on.

She looked up at her closet to the parka that hung off it, looking the same as always, as though it were completely unaware of the events around it.

 _Everywhere and nowhere,_ she thought forlornly at the coat.

Her datapad beeped again in another reminder: _Return Equipment, Ident Chip to Draven._

“Right,” she said, as though the datapad were even sentient. Wiping her nose and sniffling the last of her cries away, she got up and placed the last of the scanners on the cart.

Jyn decided on a quick face rinse before heading to Draven’s side of the base, but as she left her quarters, she nearly crashed the cart into a familiar Human.

Melshi looked as shocked to see her as she was to see him; at least, more so than the shock of having nearly been run over by a cart. “Oh,” he said, eyes still glazed over with the kind of listlessness from lunchtime that Jyn was all too familiar with.

“Alright, Melshi?” Jyn asked, her hands gripping the cart handle a little more tightly.

The rush of cool air from Jyn’s quarters only added to the chill that settled between them both. It was obvious that both of them were uncomfortable around each other, but there was a general understanding- in Jyn’s mind, anyway- that the discomfort wasn’t from disdain so much as it was out of an awkwardness stemming from a commonality they never expected to share.

It was almost cruel, Jyn thought, that she constantly found herself in the company of sentients that were closest to the Human that left a gap in her heart, finding it even harder to heal and fill it back up on her own terms, even as they struggle to do the same for themselves.

Melshi, snapping back to attention, nodded quickly. “Yeah, erm, I just-“

He looked around him, searching for something, or perhaps hoping that they were alone, but seem to find it safer that they were out in the open rather than in her quarters. “I wanted to talk.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “Can it wait?” she asked slowly, still confused by his sudden appearance. “I want to get this out of the way.” It wasn’t anything personal- it’s just that she wanted to be away from the reminders all around her for a bit longer.

“Um, I need to get this out of the way. I can’t stay quiet anymore.”

She looked down, having seen shuffling at the edges of her vision, and found that Melshi’s hands were shaking, and he was fiddling his fingers to tame the restlessness that seemed to be out of his control. He healed quickly, by the looks of it- Draven must have given him some bacta treatment for his cuts and burn wounds. They were still a bit red- fresh skin was slowly growing over the smooth rawness of his fingertips- but he nonetheless looked relatively healthy.

Physically, anyway.

“I-I wanted to apologize, Jyn. For everything,” he said at least, his voice shaking in time with his hands.

Jyn frowned. “Melshi, none of this is your fault-“

“No, Jyn, please,” he interrupted, raising a hand. “Please, I um…I need to get this off my chest. I have to.” His eyes were beginning to turn pink, and his voice grew just a bit weaker.

She realized it then: Melshi’s shaking was from the fatigue of carrying a burden that was becoming too heavy for him to bear alone. If she took a step back and really looked at him, she would’ve noticed how sickly he’d actually become since he left Yavin IV for the extraction mission. He’d thinned out a bit since she last remembered, and his skin stayed sallow as the day he returned from his assignment, when he brought Cassian’s body back to base. Looking up, she noticed that his eyes were looking every which way but avoided her eye contact entirely, and bags were forming just underneath.

Jyn wondered idly if she, too, looked like that to everyone else, and the mechanic was just sugarcoating how distraught she looked.

“I never asked for anyone to assist me in the extraction. These sorts of missions, I usually carry them out with a droid, but Draven suddenly sends Andor, and-“

Melshi stopped to take a breath and regain control of his composure. The exhale was long and slow, and he looked as though he were counting the seconds before he could inhale again.

“Originally I was sort of excited to go on a mission with him- I hadn’t really seen him in a while, and I thought it’d be a great way to hang out with him since these missions are usually easy, lowkey,” he continued. “Except-“

_Except?_

The hairs on Jyn’s neck started standing on end and her grip on the cart’s handle tightened even more. She didn’t know what to expect to hear next, but she was certain she wasn’t going to like it. She had to mentally steel herself.

“Something felt off. I saw him give you his parka, and I didn’t think much of it- he sort of likes to see you wearing it anyway- but then I noticed he was taking special care to count the inventory of his pack. You know Andor, he’s meticulous. But he was even more meticulous than before, counting his items, recounting them. And he wouldn’t let go of your scarf, always adjusting it, clutching it, checking to see if it’s still around his neck, even if he hadn’t changed his clothing.”

Jyn, too, noticed that she was deliberately regulating her breaths- when did she even start doing that?

Melshi’s voice was beginning to crack under the weight of his guilt. “I checked his pack- he brought his sniper blaster.”

_Wait-_

“I think…” Melshi said slowly, eyes turned over as though he were trying to convince himself of his own conclusion, “I think he knew ahead of time that this mission was going to turn south, and I think Draven sent him to go with me. I didn’t think about it until after the explosion, but details started to click…He had that look about him, like he was determined to see this through, you know what I mean?”

Jyn nodded; she was all too familiar with that subtle scrunch between Cassian's eyebrows, and the way his thin lips made themselves just a bit fuller; a tiny, angry, vindictive pout that seemed to say, “Just you karking watch me get this done”.

“I’m so sorry, Jyn. I just wish...”

He had to stop and he fidgeted more, and Jyn could see the internal conflict unfolding in his mind, the insistence that he stay the course and do right by himself to get his confession off his chest and out in the open, even if saying the words out loud meant taking a nightmare and turning it into reality.

“I just wish I knew he had another plan,” Melshi said before erupting into sobs again. “I would’ve dragged him with me, I would’ve stopped him from sticking around and doing whatever extra bantha fodder Draven probably wanted him to do in that room, I-“

Melshi was too distraught to continue. Jyn let go of the cart and embraced Melshi as he choked up, squeezing him tightly in comfort as he continued to mourn. There wasn’t much else she _could_ do at this point- they were both suffering, and she knew as well as anyone that words weren’t going to be enough at this stage.

“He didn’t deserve to die like that!” he cried out. “How come he has to die and I get to live!?”

_How come he has to die?_

It was a good question; Jyn wished she knew the answer.

Instead of answering his question, she said, “It’s not your fault, Melshi.”

She repeated it to him softly, over and over, and the words a tiny knock at her door. The knocking was ever-persistent, begging to be listened to, asking to be let in, but as much as the words had to be said, as much as its presence needed to be made known, Jyn wanted so badly to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist. To acknowledge the words would be to acknowledge that there was a world of regrets tagging along and weighing it down, reminding her that although there wasn’t anything that _could_ be done about the situation- that none of this was either her nor Melshi’s fault- she certainly made poor use of her life with Cassian. The knocking was a reminder that her time with him was truly up- and yet they both felt that they took their time with him for granted. His life was taken for granted.

But then the mechanic’s whispers returned:

_We tend to work better if we have hope._

_We have to live to keep fighting._

As hard as it was to get back up and keep fighting, she pushed herself to get it out, if at least for his benefit. “He dies an unknown soldier. Except to us. The galaxy doesn’t know him, or what he’s done for it, but we know. We know what he did. We-“

Jyn tried to gulp and swallow her tears, but she instead let out a whimper as the tears streaked slowly down her cheeks.

_“Rebellions are built on hope.”_

She had to try and pull through to say it. “We need to make sure his memory lives on with the rest of us. We owe him that much.”

 _Project hope_.

Another admission, another acceptance of the events, even if she wanted to deny them entirely: “We have to keep living to keep fighting. For Cassian.”

Despite the pain that seared her throat from saying it, the message smoothed out the cracks and ragged edges in her heart, just a bit. Perhaps she needed to hear the words just as much as Melshi.

Melshi nodded and, still breathless from tears, agreed: “For Cassian.”

The halls were quiet again, save for their sniffles and the occasional gasps for air as they calmed down. Jyn didn’t dare move as she continued to hold Melshi, out of fear that he would burst into tears again by the comfort. She was already emotionally stretched thin herself- she wasn’t sure if she could handle any more.

“I need to return these to Draven,” she said finally, and Melshi pulled back to give her space. Although he looked as haunted and tired as the day he landed on Thila, there was a hint of resolve in his gaze. It was still only embers, not yet a full blaze of fire, but there was clarity and hope in them, and Jyn smiled- her efforts appeared to have helped, if only a little.

“Jyn,” Melshi started, and Jyn froze at how directly and intentionally he looked straight into her eyes despite having been drained of energy. It was as though he was searching for something in her, the way they bore into her.

“I’m sorry that I haven’t been the warmest around you. It’s just hard to look at you sometimes because I keep being reminded of him.” His eyes softened just slightly and his eyebrows scrunched slightly upwards. “We haven’t worked together much, but it’s really clear why Cassian loves you. At least, it’s clear to me, anyway.”

Her heart pricked and she squeezed the cart handle again. “Did he say that?”

“Say what?”

“That he-“

_No._

_Best not to hear the answer._

_It won’t make you feel any better no matter what you hear._

“Nevermind,” Jyn sighed, and she smiled sadly. “It’s probably for the best that I never know. See you around, Melshi.”

Jyn took her time walking the cart to the comms room, if only to give herself the space to think without interruption. Her mind became a little less fuzzy with each step she took and, as her breathing normalized from the height of her emotions, she mulled over Melshi’s words when she realized something that struck her.

_“I think he knew ahead of time that this mission was going to turn south, and I think Draven sent him to go with me.”_

Something stirred inside her. Was this sadness? Regret?

_No._

It was anger.

Jyn was becoming reacquainted with a feeling she hadn’t felt in months, and she squeezed the cart handles firmly before swinging back to her quarters to retrieve one last thing.

 

"Well? Were you able to scan the ident chip?"

Jyn was still on the other side of the same long table from Draven, but she opted to stand rather than sit, a gesture that Draven mirrored, perhaps having (correctly) picked up on the confrontational hint. Although she returned the ident chip, now in his inner jacket pocket, the cart of scanners stood next to her, and the parka Draven gifted her lay in a bundle on the chair on her other side. She tried her best not to give too much away through her body language, not even the subtle clenching of her fists, but, _stars_ , it was hard to resist losing her cool at the General standing across from her.

“I did,” she said as calmly as she could. _Resist, resist!_ she tried telling herself, but the anger was still there, the kindling turning into small embers. She had to hold back, just in the meantime- there was no use in raging immediately, not if she wanted to make sure her ire was made perfectly clear.

“Very well. Then I'm sure you understand my insistence at moving on from this unfortunate incident and on to other matters.” Draven cleared his throat and glossed over his datapad. “Seeing as you missed yesterday's meeting and it's highly unlikely that you read the notes that Ensign Rook volunteered to provide, it’s best if I update you now on affairs-”

“That's it, then, is it?” she snapped.

Silence.

It wasn't that Draven was slow to respond; rather, the change in his expression from procedural to austere happened faster than she could blink. His prolonged silence, she realized, was not out of speechlessness but a desire to maintain his composure.

Jyn recognized this tactic: he intended to let her speak completely before responding, to let her run her mouth and possibly give her the chance to trip over her own words.

She inhaled sharply- if he was going to let her talk first, then so be it.

“You’re going to move on after you’ve gotten the answer you wanted out of me, is it? Just like that? Like it was just another death?” Jyn pushed the cart towards Draven, and the scanners clattered slightly as the cart bumped up against the chair closest to him.

She could hear his response in her head already: _It_ is _just another death._

“You’re not gonna talk about how you’ve had a hand in it, are you? You’re not going to talk about how you decided to make Cassian tag along rather than order Melshi to just end the double agent’s life? You’re not going to admit that it was a mistake on your part?”

Jyn saw the twitch in the corners of his lips, and she knew she struck a nerve.

“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you refused to tell me anything, claimed it was information on a ‘need-to-know basis’. That’s why you’re moving on faster than the rest of us- because you’re embarrassed by the fact that you sent him to his death.”

More silence.

Undeterred, she kept going. “It’s just like Eadu- you sent him somewhere with a different assignment, an ulterior motive, only to place him in the direct crosshairs of the Empire, with risk of death. And, worse yet, you knew he’d do it, because _of course_ he’d do it: it’s for the cause.”

Draven’s nostrils flared, again imperceptibly, but he continued to say nothing, and kept his eyes on her, refusing to back down.

“That’s your thing, isn’t it? You lie to an operative about an assignment, then place Cassian in there to do your dirty work on the side so that no one’s the wiser.”

Jyn wanted so badly to punch the table, to rage and thrash and scream at the man all across the way before jumping on the table and slugging him good, but she forced her energy to her fists, which trembled as she balled them up even tighter.

“We all knew that Cassian was one of your favorites, but at the end of the day, we’re all expendable to you, aren’t we?”

She grabbed the parka from the chair and threw it scornfully at Draven. It bounced on the table before sliding to a stop just on the other end, and the fluffy hood limped over the edge as it came to a rest. Draven continued to stare straight at her, refusing to flinch at her throw or divert his gaze to the item she was returning.

“You killed him,” she snarled, “And I want nothing to do with any of this… _bantha fodder_ you give me to distract me from what you’ve done. None of this will bring him back.”

She hadn’t realized that she’d been so angry and fuming that she was left panting to catch her breath. Her resolve had faded so fast that she’d left herself open and vulnerable for Draven to easily read like a book. But part of her didn’t care- the twitches on Draven’s face told her that she landed a few verbal punches of her own, enough to disconcert and embarrass him. He could hide behind words of pragmatism, if he so wished- and he likely would, if he could just open his moth and speak- but the cards were on the table, and Jyn made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of it with her. Not this time. Not like on Eadu with Cassian.

Finally, Draven took a calculated breath. “Are you finished?”

Jyn kept her eyes on him, readying herself for his rebuttal. She said nothing, but only nodded subtly while retaining her steely gaze.

“If you absolutely must know, Captain Andor volunteered to accompany Sergeant Melshi. In fact, he insisted on it.”

Her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly in shock. Out of all the responses she expected him to make, this one wasn’t even on the list.

“The assignment was originally an extraction mission, but shortly before take-off, Captain Andor informed me of his findings; he gathered that the agent that sent the SOS was, in fact, a double agent, and insisted I let him go with Sergeant Melshi for support.”

Draven took another breath to keep his tone steady- it was evident that he, too, had his own struggles to maintain his hardened exterior. “We couldn’t send Sergeant Melshi by himself to answer the SOS; we can’t afford another good soldier to die at that agent’s hands.”

“So you send _two_ instead?” Jyn cut in.

He raised a hand to silence her, a reminder that it was his turn to speak, and Jyn promptly shut her mouth.

“Captain Andor knew that Sergeant Melshi wasn’t skilled enough in assassination. I wanted to cancel the assignment- it was too risky to send him out there with the possibility that the SOS was a trap- but the captain argued that we couldn’t very well leave the agent there to continue working with the Empire. Captain Andor wanted to make sure he was taken out to prevent doing more damage, and then take his intel to bring back.

“I considered trying again to cancel the endeavor, let the agent lose credibility if he really were Imperial, or just leave him to stay undercover for a while longer, but then the evacuation happened and-“

Draven leaned forward to rest his palms on the tabletop next to the parka. “Captain Andor wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He wanted that intel. If I barred him from going, he might have gone anyway, just to tie up the loose ends.”

Jyn’s gaze softened- Cassian’s behavior really _was_ a trend, wasn’t it?

She caught the shift in his gaze- his eyes were downcast, for just the briefest of moments, at the futile gift, before looking back at her. “’Everything I do, I do for the Rebellion,’ he said. And-“

She held her breath. _And?_

“’The least the Rebellion could do for me in return is look after the people I love.’”

Her chest tightened. There it was again: _love_. Did he really-?

“I suspect he felt that something may happen to him, or that he may be gone for some time, so he made his arrangements to make sure you received the benefits normally bestowed onto someone of his rank and caliber through the evacuation procedure. I didn’t want him to go; the Rebellion can’t afford to lose someone like him, and yet-“

He cut himself short as his voice cracked, unable to carry on with a straight face. The recovery was quick, however- he cleared his throat and straightened his body after a few moments, and by then his face smoothed back to his trademark neutrality. “Moving on to other matters, I should inform you of developments since you were absent from the previous meeting.”

Distraught by this development and no less heartbroken over what she thought would be her chance at having the last word in their exchange, she finally took a seat.

It was almost frightening how much control Draven exerted on himself that he could switch back and forth between emotions. It was a skill, Jyn knew, that could only be obtained from living through the worst of situations, and the swiftness in which he did so only spoke to the severity of the horrors he experienced to get to that point.

Jyn did not envy him in the slightest.

Draven, however, remained standing, and he picked up his datapad again, glancing over the bullets on his notes. “Mon Mothma and I have discussed the status of the Rogue One squad and have decided, upon further deliberation, that you, Ensign Rook, and K2SO should be given off-planet assignments. Luke Skywalker, as you have already become acquainted with, has reported a possible location for our next base operations, in a remote mountainous region on Hoth. However, the terrain is extremely cold, snowy, and replete with possibly dangerous fauna. I’d like you three to accompany him and a small team to conduct a full reconnaissance and report back. We need to know if the location is safe and secluded enough to begin building our next base.”

She looked down at the table in front of him. _Hoth. Snow terrain. That meant_ -

“Judging by the look on your face, I suspect you’ve realized that you will actually need this,” said Draven, lifting the parka up from the table and holding it out for her to retrieve.

Jyn’s face turned pink, finally embarrassed at her angry outburst. She bit her inner cheek as she rose from her seat and walked the full length of the table, clutching the parka and taking it in her arms once more.

“If you wear this instead, Cassian’s won’t get damaged while you’re on assignment,” he said in a lower, much gentler voice, but there was a sense of hurt lurking in the undertones, causing Jyn to freeze and look up at him.

That’s when she saw it again- the same kind of fatigue in his eyes that she saw in Melshi, only this time...

No, it was much worse than what she saw in Melshi. It wasn’t until she was within spitting distance of the general that she realized that Draven was _exhausted_. Haunted, even. Only then did Jyn consider that the emotional burdens she and Melshi were feeling over Cassian’s death could probably never compare to the torment spiraling in Draven’s mind. She and Melshi worked with Cassian, but Draven had practically _raised_ him, mentoring him to be one of the best intel agents in the Rebellion. Having to come to terms with the idea that he sent Cassian to one too many near-death situations must have done a number on him, Jyn thought, and it wasn’t until she came back to her quarters and started packing for the journey to Hoth did she begin to appreciate Draven’s attempt at staying as strong as possible and carry on for the good of the galaxy.

She looked at Cassian’s parka again, still hanging off the closet door.

“For Cassian,” she murmured, nodding affirmatively at it with tired eyes.

Another knock at the door. “Jyn?”

“Yes, K2?”

“Will you be turning in for the night soon? We have to board early tomorrow for our journey to Hoth.”

Jyn looked down at her pack- everything was accounted for: clothes, datapad, rations, flask, blaster, and truncheons.

“Um, hang on,” she called out, and she rushed to change into her sleeping tunic. When she called K2 in, he opened the door to find her putting on Cassian’s parka. The droid regarded her again, and, after noticing the additional parka on her pack, tilted his head in curiosity.

“You’re not going to bring Cassian’s parka with you?”

She shook her head as she sat cross-legged on the bunk. “Draven suggested I leave it behind to prevent it getting damaged.”

K2 hummed. “It shouldn’t be surprising to hear that, and yet somehow it is.”

Jyn chuckled. The sound was once again unfamiliar to her, but not unwelcome. “Yeah, I thought the same thing.” She held out the hair ties once again to K2, and as he took them, she tilted her head forward expectantly.

The nightly routine started again- K2’s cool fingers smoothed down the back of Jyn’s skull in a rhythmic motion, a small comfort for the two of them as they continued to live through a life of turbulence. Before she knew it, however, the braids were completed ( _had time passed that quickly?_ ), and K2 was about to make his way out of her quarters yet again.

“You don’t have to sleep outside,” Jyn called out sleepily, already tucking in, a small lump in an oversized parka.

K2 stopped and turned around, but didn’t say anything. He considered the offer, but the longer he entertained it, the more obvious the slump in his shoulders became, clearly unsure if he was ready to be near so many reminders of what they all lost.

“I should rephrase,” Jyn said, her eyes already drooping. “Please stay with me. If you don’t mind, I mean.”

He still hadn’t said anything in response, and for a moment Jyn was worried she’d be forced to sleep alone with the memory of Melshi and Draven’s pained faces clear in her mind. It was strange how badly she wanted company now when, just a few years ago, she was perfectly content with being alone. She felt like such a child, wanting to have company as she slept.

“Alright,” K2 finally responded. “I’ll stay and wake us up for the morning.” Jyn pulled Cassian’s hood over her head and she could hear the _clunk, clunk_ noises as K2 moved to turn off the lights and dock himself to charge for the night.

Just before he activated sleep mode, however, Jyn spoke up one last time. “Hey, Kay?”

“Yes, Jyn?”

“Thanks.”

“For?”

“For being there. For trying. Everything.”

She could hear him turn his head towards her. “Trying is all we can do now.”

“I’ll try and do better tomorrow. For Cassian.”

Jyn could still see the dimmed halo lights from K2’s optics filtering through the fur lining of Cassian’s hood. But just as her eyes became heavy with the promise of sleep, she heard K2 respond quietly before his lights switched off and darkness blanketed them both:

“…For Cassian.”


	10. Chapter 10

The interior of the ship hummed gently, which was calming for everyone onboard but Jyn. She fiddled idly with her balisong, twisting and turning it this way and that to keep herself occupied. She stared out the window, the lines of light zooming and swirling past as the crew headed for Hoth. To her left, Melshi busied himself with checking his supplies and cleaning his blaster. To her right, near the cockpit, Bodhi was engaged in conversation with Luke, though Jyn couldn’t help but hear a hint of rattling in his voice. The pilot was clearly star-struck by the much-younger…he called himself a Jedi, didn’t he?

Jyn’s lips quirked up slightly in amusement, wondering if Chirrut and Baze had talked much with Luke (if they knew he claimed to be a Jedi at all). Baze did say there were no more Jedi, and she herself grew up thinking they were just characters that her mother crafted for bedtime stories to reinforce her religious beliefs in the Force.

Then again, he _was_ the one who took the shot that, despite the overwhelming odds, put a nail in the coffin of the Death Star and got rid of her father’s monster once and for all. Perhaps there was some truth to the lore she grew up with.

“I heard what you did for us,” she heard Luke say as he settled next to her on the bench.

She wasn’t sure how to respond. After all, she was in the presence of superstar Jedi Luke Skywalker- ace pilot, ace shooter, and the happy-go-lucky poster boy of the Rebellion. In any other situation, _she_ would’ve been the one to try and chat _him_ up. Then again, he was showered with all the praise and credit- everyone else was overlooked. It was hard to think of something to say without betraying a bit of bitterness still left in her mouth over the disregard for Rogue One’s role in this whole operation.

“And,” he continued, and his voice softened even more than it already was, “I heard that the Rogue One crew experienced a pretty big loss recently.”

The balisong clicked back shut as Jyn froze.

“It happens,” she said rather blankly, now trying to both overlook the naivety of this farm boy _and_ try not to be affected at the mention of the “pretty big loss,” as Luke decided to call it.

_You don’t even understand the half of it._

Luke’s fingers fidgeted as he hesitated to continue. “I…sort of know what that’s like. You know, to carry on after a big loss.”

Jyn tore away from the streaking lights to look at Luke- his blonde hair shone as the lights peered in from the window, the strands glittering like starlight with each passing. His face was downcast, shoulders slumped, and the look in his eyes, the haunted blankness…

It dawned on Jyn that perhaps he might not be so different from herself.

“I, um, lost my aunt and uncle- close to parents as it comes, really- before I joined the Rebellion. And then I lost someone really close to me while battling the Death Star.”

Jyn’s stomach churned at how close to home his story hit.

“But I don’t regret anything,” Luke said after a beat, lifting his head to flip his hair aside. “I may have lost my family, but I’m sure I’ll get to avenge their deaths. And it’s thanks to your mission that I helped take down a huge part of the Empire. My friend died fighting for the cause, and I think he wouldn’t have it any other way.”

_Fighting for the cause._

Jyn tried to keep her chest steady as she took a slow, deep breath, not wanting to appear affected by the thought of Cassian.

Finally, there was something for her to say.

“We move on,” she said simply, but despite the curt reply, there was no trace of bitterness to be found. There was instead a solemn understanding of the lives they had to carry on, the burdens they have to shoulder as they continue to fight. “There’s no choice but to. We have to carry on.”

“Right,” Luke nodded. “For them.”

She nodded in return. “For them.”

_For him._

The rest of the ride felt a little more relaxed after that.

* * *

Jyn and Melshi stepped out of the ship in full gear, gazing at the vast white emptiness Hoth offered them. She squinted at blinding glare reflecting off the snow, but quickly found relief when she lowered her goggles to put them on.

“Kriffing cold out here, and there isn’t even any wind today,” Melshi said gruffly, repositioning the gear on his back. “If we wind up setting up base here, I’m not sure how I’ll survive in this weather.”

“Already missing Thila?” Jyn asked wryly.

Melshi scoffed. “Don’t even go there.”

She bit back a smile.

The snow crunched behind them as Luke and Bodhi disembarked. “Comms should be a go, K2! Be sure to keep the ship running!” Bodhi called out, and the ship ramp lifted to shut itself out from the weather.

“It’s a bit of a trek in the snow, but that area over there had a huge glacier that I think we could dig through and use,” Luke said, pointing off in the distance. Assuming that Hoth’s environment wasn’t playing tricks on her depth perception, Jyn estimated the walk to be about 20 standard minutes away.

“Lots of ridges and rock formations covered in snow, too, it seems like,” Bodhi remarked as they ventured forward.

Luke nodded. “I noticed that there may be additional formations to camouflage our location, but I couldn’t be sure without investigating with a team. I’m a desert boy, so I can’t be too sure if there’s something about snowy terrain that I’ve got to look out for.”

* * *

The glacier itself was a lot larger than Jyn expected, and as they stepped foot in an open cavern, the four craned their necks at the icicles hanging dangerously overhead.

“Guess the weather _does_ warm up at some point,” Melshi noted.

Jyn looked ahead, already planning a travel route to traverse the cave. She listened for any sign of noise, and although there was a slight whooshing sound and a faint chill in the air, it was hard to discern where any other possible openings could exist on the other side, or even how far away they were from one. “We’ll have to stay close to the walls,” she said in the meantime, and traced a general winding path with a pointed finger.

Bodhi took out a datapad, ready to take on his newfound task as cartographer. “Ready to start outlining and documenting.” He adjusted his goggles slightly, which looked vastly different from the trio in front of him, and there was a high-pitched whirring noise as his equipment sprang to life. “Camera feed established, Kay,” he said into his comms.

“Signal received,” K2 reported back. “Please make sure to maintain the recording even if our connection is cut,” he said in reminder.

“Yeah, let’s hope it doesn’t get to that,” he sighed, and his breath came out cloudy.

Their journey continued quietly as the crew took in the sights of the cavern- it extended high up, and ran deep. Air continued to whoosh gently, and the team followed the noise hoping to find an exit to the other side, but they were yet to find it. There were no additional signs of life- no scrapes on the icy walls, no obvious footsteps in the ground, and not even a trace of droppings from any animals.

Eventually, though, signs of life hit them hard in the nostrils.

Bodhi audibly held back the urge to puke. “Stars, what _is_ that stench?!”

Jyn had been exposed to her fair share of pungent smells, but this one was pretty damn unctuous. She scrunched her nose and reached around for her macrobinoculars, refusing to take another step until she could see far enough ahead. Sure enough, there were signs of life- an entire pack of white, bipedal creatures with thick horns milled about. Some were burrowed in the snow beneath them, presumably for warmth, while others interacted and played with each other.

“I see some of them chewing on greens,” Jyn reported distractedly as she continued to watch them. “It’s safe to say that they’re not predators, but…” her voice trailed- she had little knowledge of the fauna on Hoth to discern the threat level from being in their presence.

“I believe what you’re seeing are tauntauns,” K2 chimed in through the comms. “Seeing as Jyn looked a little confused.”

She’d throw her balisong at him again if they weren’t so far apart from each other.

“Are they dangerous?” she asked into her own comms device.

“Unknown.”

“Guess we’ll have to see,” sighed Jyn.

Bodhi set his pack down and rifled through his belongings for a knife. “I have an idea,” he said, still breathless from walking in the harsh cold, and approached a crevice along the wall of the cave. He chipped away at it with his blade to reveal more of some of the local greens, and yanked it out. Bodhi managed to grab a fistful before proceeding forward.

“Bodhi!” Melshi whispered harshly. “Come back! You could get hurt!”

“I think it’ll be fine,” the pilot whispered back, undeterred.

Melshi stepped forward, but Jyn held an arm out. Looking at Luke, she jerked her head, signaling him to follow Bodhi, which he obliged, gripping at an item strapped to his waist.

Jyn watched Bodhi ease forward steadily, sure of his actions. It was amazing just how much he’d had changed since they first met over half a year ago. Did that bravery develop at her father’s encouragement, or was that always a quality in himself that finally managed to shine after what they’ve all been put through? She couldn’t help but look on with a bit of jealousy- Bodhi was proactively steadfast in this mission, and here she was, only somewhat able to keep herself together in the wake of recent events. She spent so many weeks on edge, just _itching_ to get back in the thick of things like she’d been trained to do, but now that she got what she wanted, she wasn’t sure if she could handle it. Even to this day, she refused to put “Cassian” and “death” in the same sentence, just because it still hurt to _think_ it.

_No._

She needed to be herself again, or else everyone would move on without her.

_I need to be better._

“Keep your hand on your blaster, just in case,” Jyn said to Melshi in a low voice, lowering her arm. The two followed suit, blasters at the ready, keeping a viable distance between Bodhi and Luke as they surveyed the rest of their surroundings.

“There, see?” Bodhi said as he beamed with pride. A tauntaun who tore away from the group sniffed questioningly at Bodhi’s offering, but soon happily accepted the greens from him, and although some of the others continued to eye them cautiously, the rest of the pack went back to their activities, dismissing them as a possible threat.

Their foul stench still took some getting used to, but they documented as much as they could of the creatures while searching for other possible signs of life.

“It doesn’t look like the cavern is being used much as a living quarters per se,” Luke noted, searching the grounds for other signs. “These tauntaun might actually just be here resting for a bit before they head back out again. But where to, who knows.”

“We’re deep in the cavern right now, Kay- what’s the weather like outside?” Bodhi asked, making more sketches in his datapad.

“Weather’s still bright, but the wind is picking up a bit,” K2 replied. “I’m starting to suspect that the sun may be due to set soon, so I suggest returning to the ship as a precaution.”

“Copy that, K2, thanks.”

“Come back soon, though- I’m bored,” the droid whined.

Jyn rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you tap into the Alliance comm systems and eavesdrop on conversations again?”

“I already did!” His voice box wheezed as he sighed. “It was all boring, procedural stuff. And then someone kept asking about the weather, which was only fun because no one could figure out who was asking or why, but then they dismissed it and it got boring again, so-.”

“Alright, alright, alright, we’ll start heading back soon,” Melshi cut in to appease K2.

While Bodhi and Luke continued to bond with the tauntauns and Melshi stood cautiously to the side to keep watch, Jyn continued to walk past them and ventured to a split opening to their right. With each step, however, she noticed that the snow here was patted down and no longer had that same crunch under her feet.

 _Odd_ , she thought. _Why the change of terrain all of a sudden?_

After a few meters, however, she came across a scent even fouler than the herd of tauntauns they came across. Were all the fauna of Hoth just incredibly smelly?

She saw a lump on the ground- _a sleeping animal?_ \- and tried to approach it. Once she laid eyes on the creature, however, she immediately froze. A tauntaun lay on the ground, spattered with red. Their mouth was agape with a ghastly expression. Flesh had been torn to pieces, no longer able to stop their ribcage from protruding, and a trail of blood continued past the carcass, down the path, until…

The air around her suddenly got colder as her eyes moved upwards, eyeing the trail of blood splashed across the dirty-white fur of a towering figure with the blackest eyes. The figure snarled, teeth baring, and their breath blew hot as the blood dripped from their lips.

Jyn’s eyes widened. “…Abommy?”

She slowly started to back away; it was understandable that stuffed animals were always designed to be cuter than the real thing, but Abommy the Gig, one of her favorite childhood plush toys, looked absolutely _nothing_ like this. Childhood Jyn, she concluded, was an absolute idiot for ever thinking wampas were adorable and fluffy and huggable.

Above head, two additional tauntaun dangled from the ceiling of the cavern, and she gulped.

The wampa took one step forward, and Jyn bolted.

As she ran out that section of the cavern and made a sharp left to return to the group, Bodhi waved at her, beaming with excitement as he sat mounted on a tauntaun.

“Hey Jyn!” he shouted. “Turns out you can actually _ride_ these fellas if you’re nice enough to them! Isn’t that neat?”

She hated to interrupt him, really, truly, but…

“RUN!” she screamed just before the wampa roared and turned the corner to find an entire week’s worth of food ready for him to swipe.

It was a mad scramble- the herd of tauntauns froze and looked ahead at Jyn, then up at the towering wampa charging towards them, and broke out into a frenzied run, including the ones that Bodhi, Luke, and Melshi had already mounted. Although Jyn was quick on her feet, it meant nothing to the wampa, whose long legs steadily closed the gap between them.

“K2, how good is your aim?” Jyn could hear Melshi yell into the comms.

“…Seriously? You’re asking a droid about aiming accuracy?” K2 deadpanned.

“NOW IS NOT THE TIME!” Jyn screamed, nearly tripping over the uneven ice in the cavern.

“Oh, hang on. Oh yes, I see, that _is_ a big problem. A big, furry one.”

“K2, _please_!” Melshi yelled.

Jyn’s head pounded as she continued to run, and panic started to fuel her movements as the rest of the crew grew further and further away. Try as she might, however, the wampa was still gaining on her. She wanted nothing more than to take out her blaster and gun him down, but with the winding path of the cavern, it was a huge risk to slow her running just to get a shot at slowing down the gigantic creature.

There were, however, icicles above.

Quickly, she pulled out her blaster and started singling out icicles that were just thick enough to fall by a single blaster shot. With the proper timing, she could shoot them down just as she ran past them so that they fell on the wampa. Based on the terrain and the wampa’s thick, wooly coat, the icicles were unlikely to inflict much damage on their own, but it would at least slow him down enough to buy her time to make it out of the cavern and start making real shots.

“K2, warm up the ship and have your blasters at the ready,” Bodhi called in. “Wampa in fast pursuit of Jyn- we’re heading back as quick as we can on tauntaun, but Jyn is still behind.”

“Ramps deployed; ready for boarding,” K2 quickly responded. “Blasters deployed, ready to fire.”

Jyn finally managed to clear the cavern and turned around to open fire, shooting first for the wampa’s feet to take advantage of their proximity. The wampa’s fur and skin were too thick, however, and it only served to aggravate the wampa even further, who roared louder and stomped harder into the snow.

“Skin’s too thick, I can’t blast through it!” Jyn cried out, and her legs were starting to feel wobbly. Her body was running on sheer fight-or-flight instinct at this point, completely ignoring the complete loss of energy in her system. She cursed herself for not training on a regular basis to keep her fitness- _you’d be much closer to the ship if you actually trained_ , she reprimanded herself- but she forced herself to keep running. Out of all the ways to die, being torn to shreds at the hands of a wampa in the empty, snowy vastness of Hoth was _not_ one of the ways she had in mind for herself.

She faced forward and saw that the others had already dismounted their tauntauns, and the herd dispersed around the ship. Melshi led the charge by aiming his own blaster at the wampa, but the distance made it hard for the trio to get any shots at the wampa’s head.

K2, however, chimed in. “Aiming for the eyes,” he said simply, and fired away.

The move worked- the wampa roared again, clutching their eyes in pain as they fell to their knees.

It bought Jyn just enough time to finally catch up to the ship and dive headfirst, tumbling and crashing into the hard metal of the ship's walls, and the ramp quickly closed. The ship shook slightly as the wampa caught up and blindly swiped at them, but Bodhi was quick to deploy the thrusters and they were soon well out of the wampa’s reach.

Melshi was quick to help her sit up, and offered her an already-open ration bar. Jyn grabbed it greedily, albeit clumsily, and tried her best to chew through it. Her stomach churned, her legs burned, and her head continued to pound, but as K2 and Bodhi hit atmo, parts of her body that once screamed in pain faded to a mid-level whine, and her mind finally managed to focus just enough to be coherent.

“Are you alright, Jyn?” Melshi asked, and she could see the worry spreading across his face.

Although Jyn was still too weak to fully sit up on her own, she gave him a weak punch in the arm.

“You should know by now that I don’t like to go down without a kriffing fight,” she chuckled, and chugged down more water from her canteen.

When the ship finally reached hyperspace and Bodhi relayed their status report back to Thila, the rest of the crew joined Jyn on the cold, hard floor of the ship, and engaged in lively chatter to get the nerves out of their system.

It wasn’t quite the same vibe, not without Cassian around, and surely Melshi, Bodhi, and K2 felt as much, but it was as close to “normal” it could get.

For Jyn, that was good enough.

* * *

“As you can see,” Luke concluded, and he swiped on the large screen to switch to a new image featuring a roughly drawn blueprint, “Ensign Rook drew a rough map of what we managed to explore so far. We think that with the high ceilings, this space is ideal to carve a new base from the glacier, and expand even more within the mountainous caverns.”

Draven looked at Bodhi’s plans carefully. It was a bit tricky to discern what was going on in his mind, but the longer he regarded the designs, the more confident Jyn was in believing that their assignment could actually be considered a success.

It looked as though he was set to approve the intel, but then he cleared his throat, and the downward intonation of it caused Jyn to worry.

“Possible threats to our safety in regards to flora or fauna?” he asked simply.

“Um,” Bodhi said, raising his hand as he stood up from his seat. “We came across one major predator- wampas- that feed primarily on tauntauns, but will not hesitate to attack other species for food. We’ve _also_ discovered that tauntauns can be trained to be mounted by humans, indicating a possibility for domestication. They’re built to be quite fast in order to run away from wampas, and as long as we use firepower stronger than a standard-issue blaster, I believe we can contain most threats to our safety.”

Draven hummed, and switched between studying the intel report on his datapad and the proposed blueprints above.

“Good work, all,” he said at last. “These materials will be forwarded higher up for review, but I dare say this location can work to our advantage for a new base. Dismissed.”

Jyn stood up, excited for the hot shower that awaited her back at her quarters, when Draven stopped her.

“Erso, a word?” he asked curtly.

 _Oh great_ , she thought. Was he going to reprimand her for poor performance? Or perhaps pick on her for separating from the group, which was what caused the wampa to chase after them in the first place? She _did_ build a reputation of getting herself into the thick of things, but to do it on her first assignment in months?

It wasn’t looking too great.

“Yes, sir?” she asked.

“Based on Commander Skywalker’s report, and Ensign Rook’s supplementary report, you put yourself through yet another unnecessary situation.”

Jyn bit the inside of her cheek. He wasn’t _wrong_ , but…

“Which sounds to me like you adjusted back into active missions without much of a change,” he concluded.

She eyed him incredulously. Was this supposed to be good news?

“It looks like I can give you more assignments without having to worry too much about the events over the past month affecting your performance.” Draven’s lips quirked upwards just slightly, trying not to give away traces of a smile, but Jyn caught them, and her chest felt lighter.

Jyn pursed her lips and looked downwards, trying to hide a smile of her own.

“However, I can’t overlook your loss of rigor since we kept you here on Thila. Sergeant Melshi was clocked over the head when he extracted you from Wobani, and K-2SO had to subdue you just to get you on their ship.” he said, standing up straighter before walking out of the meeting room. “See to it that you improve your fitness.”

It was hard to hide her smile now.

“Yes, sir.”

* * *

“Shooting practice?” Baze asked.

Jyn nodded, taking a sip of blue milk.

“Sounds like our Little Sister is getting back on her feet,” Chirrut said knowingly, grinning the whole time.

Well, it wasn’t _entirely_ true, but it was just good to have her spirits boosted from a successful mission. It still wasn’t quite the same- her thigh was still cold from the lack of contact with Cassian's, and her hip was missing the feel of his broad, warm hand, but the bubbly joy in her chest got pretty close with the company of her family, who seemed to be so proud of her attempts at recovery. She wanted to hang on to that feeling for as long as she could.

“Draven wants me to get my fitness and accuracy back, and since you two are in charge of ammunitions and training, I think I should get a head start on it,” she said as she set her mug down on the mess table.

“Jyn nearly escaped death, you know,” Bodhi chimed in, beaming with pride at her long-overdue presence at dinner.

“She escaped it thanks to me,” K2 corrected, which prompted Bodhi to smack his chassis to shush him.

“You both did good; don’t diminish her efforts here!”

“Just stating the truth,” he shrugged, but Jyn didn’t bother to fight it; his regular scathing sass was starting to come back, and she didn’t want to take that away from him either.

Chirrut looked pointedly at Jyn’s direction. “If you want to start sparring, we can practice tonight before lights-out,” he offered.

“Shooting practice in the afternoon, after lunch,” Baze said gruffly.

Having a routine again, something stable to work on while being surrounded by loved ones…

It sounded like a good plan.

And it was, up until she landed flat on her back on the training mat for the seventh time in a row, and she looked up to see Chirrut sporting a wide grin.

“You’ve lost your touch, Little Sister!” he declared.

Jyn groaned before getting up and dusting herself off.

Chirrut lightly smacked her calf with his staff. “Your focus isn’t where it needs to be.”

“I’m focused enough,” she said, dismissing him with a wave before taking a drink of water. “I’m just rusty. I’ll get there.”

“I think you need meditation to center yourself better.”

 _Meditation?_ Since when was that ever necessary? Not that she wanted to disrespect Chirrut for his routines and practices, but the act did seem like a frivolous ritual conjured by religion.

Then again, there _was_ her mother to think about.

And, _Luke is a Jedi_ , she remembered.

_Don’t forget the times you’ve greeted Cassian’s parka._

There may be some truth to this, then. She caved and quirked and eyebrow. “Will it actually work?”

He nodded confidently. “A warrior fights best when their mind is as sharp as their weapon.”

Chirrut had a point.

The guardian must have sensed her consideration, because he went ahead and continued speaking without needing a response from her. “We will meet here tomorrow night before bed, and we’ll practice learning how to better clear your mind. For now, I think you need to sleep- it doesn’t do you any good to spar when you’re still drained from all that running.”

Jyn patted her face down with a hand towel. “Thanks, Chirrut, for all of this.”

“Ah, don’t thank me just yet!” he beamed. “Upon your return I went ahead and asked Draven if you could assist me in holding sparring lessons for the new recruits. We’ve had a surge of people since Alderaan’s destruction, and I can’t train them all by myself.”

She frowned. “Uh, I don’t think I’m fit for training recruits just yet-“

“So Draven approved the idea, and you start teaching your first lesson with me tomorrow before lunch!”

_Of course he’d go ahead and do that._

Jyn rolled her eyes- Chirrut could be so willful at times it’s no wonder Baze grumbles about him on a regular basis. But it was hard to stay mad at him when he always spoke to her whilst beaming with such an immense pride and confidence in her abilities.

“Fine,” she relented.

“You’re welcome!” he said cheekily.

She didn’t want to admit it to him, but she did smile when his face lit up and his eyes twinkled.

* * *

Jyn woke up the next morning feeling completely sore, and for once it was difficult to get up not because of a heavy heart, but an actually heavy body. It took some effort to undo the braids K2 made for her the night before, but she finally did, and, as she did before leaving for Hoth, she picked up Cassian’s parka, which lay next to her in bed, and gingerly put it back up on a hangar to rest on her closet door. She patted it- another part of her new routine- and pressed her forehead against it. It was as close to pressing it against his chest as it could get, and it certainly seems a bit silly if she stopped to think about it, but it was a routine she decided she was never going to let go for the rest of her days.

“Good morning,” she said quietly, with a lovingly warm tone, as though she expected it to reach Cassian somehow, even if he was gone.

“Good morning, Jyn,” K2 replied back.

She shot him a look, but K2 walked out of their quarters before he caught sight of it.

“Bodhi’s in the hangar bay- I’ll see you when you’re out of the shower,” he called out as the doors closed.

“Thanks again for offering to go with me on the humanitarian assignment,” Bodhi said with an outstretched arm. Jyn handed him a wrench on cue. “I know it’s nothing glamorous by your standards, but these types of missions mean a lot to me.”

“Rebellions are built on hope,” Jyn replied, and K2 and Bodhi both nodded in acknowledgement of their fallen friend. “If we can give them hope, then it’s more than what the Empire gives them. At any rate, the Partisans provided their own aid- I’m not entirely unfamiliar with missions like these.”

“Fewer organic sentients will die in this case, though,” K2 said as a matter-of-factly, but that sass did not get past Jyn, who promptly knocked her balisong against his chest, letting the clanking noise ring through the entire hangar bay.

“I didn’t always agree with Saw’s methods,” Jyn scowled.

“I know,” K2 replied lightly, and she rolled her eyes with a knowing smirk.

Though Jyn was glad to be away from barren coldness of Hoth, she wasn’t sure if she missed Thila- she was faced once again with the intense topical weather and sweat had soon begun to bead on her forehead. And while the weather was the biggest turn-off about being in the hangar bay, the peace of working on machinery with Bodhi and K2 made it worthwhile, but only just.

A beep sounded at the comms device, followed by a series of murmurs from the headset. Curiously, Bodhi got up and put them on.

Jyn tilted her head. “Everything alright, Bodhi?”

He sighed with relief and put the headset back. “For a second I worried it was regarding our assignment next week- turns out it’s just The Weatherman again.”

“’The Weatherman’?”

“Ah, The Weatherman is still at it?” K2 asked.

Bodhi nodded. “Yeah, he’s still asking about the weather every few days or so. Some of the pilots started screwing with him by giving him different weather reports on different worlds to shut him up, but it's possible that The Weatherman happens to be a spy trying to hijack our comms channels to find our new location.” He shrugged nonchalantly as he twisted his screwdriver to shut the panel he was working on. “I wouldn’t blame them for it, to be honest; the Empire is probably working overtime to try and find us since we all evacuated.” Bodhi then jerked his head behind him. “I even have a pack that the Alliance gave me to disguise my face in case I land in an area where Imps are still checking our mugs. The prosthetics and make-up can get kind of itchy, but luckily I only need it in places where the nerf-herders are so underpaid that they’d be eager to report us in a heartbeat for a major payoff.”

Jyn frowned. Did this mean…?

“Ah, yes, that reminds me, Jyn- Draven had one prepared for you as well. I’ll have it ready for you when we ship out, and I’ll help you apply them. Our destination is more than a bit run-down,” he chuckled.

She scrunched her nose in dissatisfaction at the notion that she’d have to apply a more “intimate” disguise just so that she could help Bodhi deliver food and clothing safely to underserved communities in the galaxy. But, she supposed, making a minor sacrifice to her comfort was nothing compared to the other forms of suffering she went through, much less what she witnessed in others.

At any rate- she thought wryly when she checked the chrono on her datapad- it was nothing compared to the sacrifice in comfort that was soon to come in the training room.

* * *

Jyn’s back became reacquainted once again with the flat of the training mat as Chirrut swiped at her feet to knock her down. She landed with a thud and a dull “oof” before being helped up by the cheery guardian.

“As you may have noticed,” Chirrut announced midway through the training session, “I have brought someone to assist me in training you for close-combat fighting. If you don’t already know her, meet your new co-instructor, Sergeant Jyn Erso.”

She noticed a stark contrast between Chirrut’s upright enthusiasm and the slumped hesitation of the new recruits in front of her. There was whispers and slight murmurs of uncertainty, and some were entirely unsubtle in hiding their frowns and upturned eyebrows scrunching with doubt.

He nudged her gently, prompting her to stiffen her posture and clear her throat. “If any of you have a problem with this, speak up now or leave,” she declared. “I’m not interested in training people who can’t be bothered to communicate clearly, and we don’t have much time to waste.”

“I do,” a recruit said, and although his voice was a bit shaky, the volume resonated throughout the room with reasonable confidence.

Jyn eyed the recruit- he looked relatively well-groomed, and it was clear by the lack of wrinkles and worry in his eyes and the fullness of his cheeks that he lived rather comfortably before enlisting with the Alliance. It was highly likely, then, that he came from somewhere in The Core. Despite his somewhat stocky build and his high-class swagger, he hesitated to stand up even straighter when addressing her.

“Weren’t you related to one of the scientists behind the development of the Death Star?”

“I was, yes.”

She tried her best to keep her face neutral- after all the doubt the Rebel Alliance gave her in the War Room before leaving for Scarif, one would have hoped that questions about her allegiance should have ceased by now.

Little did she expect even new recruits to question her.

The recruit took a brave step forward. “Why should I put my trust in you when your family was instrumental in the destruction of my homeworld? I was _born_ there, and now it’s gone from the sky, like it never existed.”

Jyn matched him and took a step forward as well. “Sacrifices were made.” She tried to hold her tongue from there, tried to conceal the pang in her heart when she remembered her father’s confession in the holo Bodhi delivered to Saw, tried to stop herself from asking him what he even knew of sacrifice and loss when he very clearly had a history of living in comfort and luxury, but as he took another step forward to challenge her, the temptation grew stronger by the second.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Is that how you’re trying to spin it? Billions of people gone, and that’s considered a _sacrifice_ for the future of the galaxy?”

“What do you know?” she sniped.

_What do you know?_

The words suddenly repeated themselves in the back of her mind, but the voice wasn’t hers.

_I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old!_

The memory came back to haunt her, and her chest tightened.

 _Don’t do this, please,_ she begged herself, not wanting to be reminded of the anger and hurt in his voice.

But it didn’t stop.

_You’re not the only one who lost everything._

_Some of us just decided to do something about it._

_Do you think anybody is listening?_

_Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn._

_Jyn, I…_

She forced herself to shake it all away before taking another step, which put her just within arm’s reach of the recruit. “You know nothing of sacrifices,” she snarled, making sure to look him straight in the eye. “And you know nothing of what I’ve been through, nor do you deserve to know.”

When he took yet _another_ step closer, the bubbling anger overshadowed her temptation, and she struck.

The move was swift, if a bit rough in appearance- Jyn quickly shoved her palm against his shoulder and it twisted his torso just enough to present his other arm to her, which she wasted no time in yanking. Before he could even respond with a counter of his own, she was already behind him, having pulled the arm back enough that he couldn’t bend it, and she struck him behind the knees, causing his legs to buckle and bend before helplessly falling knees-first to the ground. Not wanting to let him use even a drop of his upper body strength, she let her full body weight push his torso down while grabbing his free arm. The result: the man’s cheek pressed against the training mat as Jyn pressed his wrists firmly against his back while using her legs to pin his knees down, preventing him from squirming too much to escape her hold.

It was enough to command silence from the rest of the recruits, most of whom stepped back in surprise at the sheer speed and ferocity of her movements.

“You’re from The Core, right? What did _you_ do to stop the Empire’s atrocities from causing further destruction up until now?” She lowered herself just enough to make her words sharp and clear in his ear: “Most of the wealth you lived comfortably off of is Imperial. If you’re smart enough to question my family lineage, you’re smart enough to understand that your years of inaction led to the _active_ oppression of the organics you’re only now trying to defend because of the destruction of your birth planet.”

She pressed even further down on his wrists and he nearly cried out in pain.

“Cut the bantha fodder. Don’t be stupid. And get off your high-horse; we’re all here to achieve the same goal now.”

Jyn finally let go and stood up, leaving a hand extended for the man to begrudgingly accept to stand back up.

“Trust goes both ways. I couldn’t care less if you think I’m not fit for the job- I’ve been assigned to train you, and I expect to do exactly that. If you’re not interested in learning how to prepare yourself, you can take it up to your superiors. The door’s right behind you.”

No one dared to speak up this time.

“Good,” she said, then patted the stocky recruit roughly on the back. “We’ll start with some basic maneuvers against the common Stormtrooper.”

* * *

After a grueling session with the recruits, most of them trudged out of the training room, wincing in pain over any number of sore body parts as they attempted to clean themselves up before lunch. Chirrut approached Jyn and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“And you swore you couldn’t teach,” he grinned.

She rolled her eyes. “Training is one thing; teaching is an entirely new beast. It’s completely different from how Partisans learned to fight.”

“You’re no longer a Partisan,” the guardian responded pointedly.

Jyn chuckled as she wiped the sweat around her neck. “If only Cassian were alive to see this- he’d laugh his ass off at the sight of me actually _teaching_ new recruits.”

Chirrut patted her chest soothingly, right where her mother’s necklace usually rested when she wasn’t sparring. “He can laugh about the sight one day, if you keep this up.”

Her heart sank despite the lighthearted words. “Right. Because Cassian is everywhere and nowhere all at once.”

“He’s somewhere out there, Jyn,” he said.

“Is that what your religion believes?” she asked a touch too bitterly, and she immediately regretted her snippy reaction when he retracted his hand and stared blankly in her direction.

She bit her lip- she must have gone too far and personally insulted him.

But instead of trying to defend his beliefs, he serenely responded with: “I see you have a hard time believing. Your focus is still elsewhere, and your actions are fueled by anger rather than a desire for justice. This is why meditation is necessary.”

Jyn’s eyebrows furrowed slightly with worry- she still wasn’t sure if meditation was going to help.

Of course, Chirrut sensed it. “Trust goes both ways,” he reminded her, and she winced at having her words thrown back at her. “If you don’t believe me when I say the captain is somewhere out there, then at least believe me when I say that meditation will help you heal.”

He didn’t even bother to wait for a response before he tapped his staff on the mat and walked off, a clear sign to Jyn that he was _a_ _bit_ hurt over her skepticism.

“Don’t forget,” he called out as he reached the doorway, “Tonight. Before bed. Mine and Baze’s quarters.”

Jyn laid back down on the training mat and stared dully at the ceiling. After a month of inaction and boredom, she suddenly found her life in an endless tumultuous swirl since Cassian’s death was announced, and it left her overwhelmed. Was meditation even a solution? And if it was, what was it a solution _for_? She wanted to carry on- no, she _had to_ carry on- for the sake of preserving Cassian’s legacy. All she needed to do was keep her eyes on the prize by working with the Alliance until the Galactic Empire finally crumbled. What did it matter if her mind wasn’t as “sharp” as Chirrut claimed? Her focus was sharp enough to understand at least this much.

But then she remembered the hurt she felt when the recruit foolishly questioned her loyalties, the way the memories of Cassian sidelined her, and the way her anger ultimately fueled her first training session. Perhaps she _did_ need to heal more than she cared to admit. Perhaps she needed to shut up and listen to Chirrut, and give meditation a serious effort.

 _You have to be stronger_.

 _Trust the Force_ , she heard her mother say.

Still looking up at the ceiling, she reached over the edge of the training mat, curled her fingers tightly around her mother’s kyber necklace, and sighed heavily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted so badly to do more world-building and RO crew bonding that i inadvertently extended the number of chapters before the plot turns around for the better. Please bear with me!


	11. Chapter 11

_Cassian had the ability to take silence and make it more deafening than any sort of noise Jyn had ever experienced._

_She’d done something reckless again that he didn’t approve of, and she knew it. But there was no way for them to even get some distance between themselves to cool off, not when they were sharing their quarters together._

_The best compromise, then, was to simply face away from each other and say nothing._

_It made her so discomfited that after a while, she finally spoke up- anything to break the silence. “They were going to find us and call it in if I didn’t attack first,” she mumbled feebly._

_He said nothing to that, at least not for a few moments. “They did anyway.”_

_“We were cornered, Cassian.”_

_“We could’ve tried to talk our way out of it.”_

_“Because that’s your go-to strategy every time, right?” she quipped sharply._

_It pressed his buttons enough for her to know that his shoulders tensed, if only subtly, bristled by her retort._

_She regretted it immediately. “I take that back,” she said, lowering her head. Even if they weren’t looking at each other, she still felt the need to turn away to save face. “That was insensitive of me.”_

_The silence returned, and Jyn practically choked on it with each passing second._

_Finally, “There were dozens of them, Jyn.”_

_“And I handled them all.”_

_“You did, yes.”_

_“And we finished our assignment without any additional hitches.”_

_“Indeed, we did.”_

_“The whole thing was a success at the end of the day.”_

_“So Draven had said.”_

_With closed fists, she dug her nails into her palms before taking the leap. “Then why are we not talking?”_

_“What is there to say, Jyn?” he snapped. “I could say any number of things to you, but did you ever think to talk to me for once? Instead of just acting on instinct and expecting me to follow?”_

_“That’s how much I trust you! We can act faster this way-“_

_“No, Jyn!” He spun around so quickly, arms raised with such frustration bubbling to the surface that she nearly jumped._

_It was painful to watch his restraint teeter between an acidic monologue and continued silence- Jyn was aware, by the look in his eyes, that Cassian wanted to be in neither state, but with the tension ballooning so much between them, something was bound to pop. Cassian seemed to have acknowledged this as well, pausing with his arms still in the air for only the briefest of moments before using the momentum to comb his fingers aggressively through his hair._

_He closed his eyes took a deep breath to center himself-_ 1…2…3…4… _, Jyn counted, feeling as though each second lasted years- and when they opened again, Jyn’s throat clenched and her heart cracked as she got a better look at them. Although his gaze was painted with frustration and anger, she could see fleeting flashes of worry, sadness, and resignation._

_“You leapt without saying anything,” he muttered._

Nothing needed to be said ** _,_** _she thought,_ action needed to be take-

_“You left me behind.”_

_Her fingers twitched and her heart stopped from the pin-pricking of guilt._

_“I couldn’t prepare to help you because I didn’t know what you were planning, Jyn. We could’ve tried to cut through them and ran, I could’ve tried to take on the other one at the same time.”_

_She blinked. How was she supposed to interpret this?_

_Cassian’s breath came out in small shudders as he finally regained his sense of calm, but the sound of his voice still shook with a fear she hadn’t seen in him since he woke up in the medbay after Scarif._

_“There’s a time and a place for words. But you and me…we’re supposed to be a team now._ Partners. _”_

Partners.

_“If we don’t make our words count, one of us could slip up, and-“_

_Jyn tentatively grabbed his hand._ Please don’t say it _, she quietly begged, finally understanding why he was so upset, and fearing the picture he was due to paint with the rest of his words._

_It wasn’t often that Cassian Andor- the man with many masks, the man with impeccable control on his appearances- showed his vulnerabilities, but he let his eyes turn glassy and his lower lip quiver without restraint, and the expression alone hit her hard in the gut. The hits she sustained from the Stormtroopers on their assignment were feeble slaps by comparison, and Jyn was left winded and speechless at how easily his eyes alone could pour out everything he wanted to say, even as she was being berated for not using enough words to begin with._

_She watched his lips pucker, and she thought again:_ Please don’t finish the sentence-

_“-one of us could be returning with a corpse for the morgue, if we’re lucky enough for the other to survive.”_

_It was worse than just hearing “_ die _”._

_He squeezed her hand. “You could’ve died, Jyn, and I might’ve been powerless to help.” His hands moved up to her shoulders as his head dropped limply against her forehead._

_“There were so many of them, Jyn, and it was just the two of us. I don’t want our last memory together to be the sight of one of us with our skulls cracked on the dirt, not when we could’ve acted better, smarter.”_

_It was getting harder and harder not to cry when she could see dewy teardrops on his long lashes. His nose pressed more firmly against hers and his hands wandered upwards again to her jawline, as though he were studying her features for one final time._

_“We’ve had so many close calls- I just want to make sure we’re both standing tall to face them._ Together. _”_

_Jyn’s breath shuddered as she inhaled, finally unable to hold back her own tears. “I didn’t realize I made you feel that way- I just thought you were fine with it…Cassian, I’m sorry.”_

_“I know you are,” he said, the fear still shaking his voice. He pulled back, just enough for them to study each other’s faces. His thumbs caressed her cheeks, and he tried to force a smile to counter the outpouring of emotion._

_“…Because you don’t say it often,” he quipped._

_She had to let out a chuckle of admission._

_The two stayed this way for just a bit longer- his hands cupping her face, his eyes studying her features, her own gaze taking in the constellation of glistening teardrops across his cheeks and eyelashes, tracing over his high cheekbones and the rustled hairline she knew he took relatively great pains to keep stylishly unkempt for someone seemingly unconcerned with his appearances while on-base._

_She was surrounded by his warmth, and yet somehow a sharp coldness struck her face and-_

 

Jyn’s eyes snapped open and she found herself sitting cross-legged on the floor of an unfamiliar room with a harsh chill striking her tear-streaked cheeks. Her chest felt like it was folding in on itself, forcing her breathing to race faster- was she _panicking_?

She heard a quiet, but contemplative hum from Chirrut to her left, and her head whipped in that direction to find him likewise sitting cross-legged on the floor. Only then was she able to remember where she was, and why she was there.

“It seems like you’re internalizing a lot, Little Sister,” he remarked, frowning.

There was a scoff behind her, followed by a much deeper voice. “Of course she would be, after a loss like that.” Jyn turned around to find Baze leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, regarding Chirrut with a frown of his own. “Even Guardians have had difficulties dealing with the loss of a loved one.”

Chirrut shot him a look. “We did not lose a loved one,” he insisted, and it continued to amaze Jyn that Chirrut seemed to be steadfast in denying the obvious. “I am helping her learn to heal from her pain; only then can she clear the paths in her mind.”

“There is more than one way to heal from the pain,” Baze rebutted, “but forcing Little Sister to recall memories of The Captain isn’t one of them.”

Jyn winced. Even if she still couldn’t understand the whole point of this exercise, she knew what fighting words sounded like.

Chirrut got up to his feet. Although he was clearly bristled by Baze’s undertone, he merely smiled in response. “Being mindful enough to acknowledge the pain and give it its due course is key to healing. Bottling it up and refusing to feel it is counterproductive, and will only continue to cloud the mind.”

Baze’s gaze narrowed. “She’s already grieved,” he said pointedly. “Without us.”

That stung- Baze’s stance on her actions (and, she supposed, the enablement on K2’s part) were made clear in that moment, and she couldn’t help but feel guilty for having such an extreme knee-jerk reaction in the form of shutting everyone out. Still, he was upset at both her _and_ Chirrut, and her continued presence in their quarters was likely aggravating it.

Jyn slowly got up, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly but earnestly, and the tension between the two Guardians diffused in an instant as they stopped to look at her.

She twiddled her fingers; she didn’t apologize often, and she was sure Cassian wasn’t the only one who knew it. _Apologies are an admission of fault,_ Saw would say, _and if you don’t fail, you never have to apologize_. It helped maintain a show of strength, and emphasized the importance of doing things right the first time, but she’d be lying to herself if she said that she took the news of Cassian’s death well.

“It wasn’t fair to shut everyone out like that, even if what I wanted at the time was space. I should have communicated better.”

Was that even an effective apology? She wasn’t sure, but it sure made her shoulders feel just a touch lighter by letting it out.

“Well?” Baze responded after a period of silence. “Communicate with us now, then: do _you_ think that Chirrut’s methods are good for you?”

It was the sort of question Jyn hadn’t heard in a very long time. Carrying out orders was easy. Thinking about a course of action to survive was easy. But, thinking about what was good for her personal health? She couldn’t remember ever being treated like that. Perhaps, to some degree, her parents tried to instill some semblance of that in her, but how much can anyone remember of their childhood when the pages of one’s memories were blasted and turned to ash by the conflicts of others?

She opened her mouth to answer, but it came out so crackly and quiet that she almost didn’t recognize it as being her own voice. “I…”

The idea that sentients continued to exist in her life and, for once, _not_ leave her behind, was still such a foreign feeling to her that Baze and Chirrut’s kindness once again caught her so off-guard it nearly scared the lights out of her. It wasn’t until this exact moment that she truly felt the weight of that reality- it sunk in her chest, tugging her throat down with it, and it hurt to swallow without letting her tears continue to run.

Jyn had to use words. She had to bring them on the same page, even if it was for a vulnerability she kept locked away in her chest and buried so deep in a labyrinth that only Cassian and herself had access to.

 _Your partner is gone,_ she told herself.

_But…even if that partner is gone, these are your partners, too._

She clenched her fists and cleared her throat. “I trust Chirrut.”

Chirrut’s milky-blue eyes lit up.

“I want to try this,” she said with more certainty.

Baze, meanwhile, continued to regard her. She knew he was in disagreement with Chirrut’s methods, but she also knew he was going to trust her if this was what she truly wanted. The certainty in her voice made it clear, and he sighed like a parent- aggravated, but resigned, and willing to back off to respect her decision.

“More shooting practice, tomorrow, after lunch,” he huffed, and left the room.

The silence returned, but instead of choking her, it blanketed her in a comfortable warmth between her and Chirrut, who was grinning from ear to ear.

“I’m going to keep that victory,” he declared, and he plopped back down, extending an arm out to Jyn in invitation.

“Alright, but just do me a favor and stop talking about Cassian like he’s still alive,” she said as she took her place back on the floor. “I want to heal, not be lied to.”

“Dear Sister,” Chirrut said gently, “I would never lie to you.”

She blinked at him, unsure if he fully understood what she was asking of him.

“As such, recalling these painful memories to give them their due time is not going to be easy. Let’s close our eyes again and think of the first memory you associate with the pain you’re feeling. Treat them like bubbles- focus on them as they float past, take in the feeling of the memory, and then watch it float away.”

Jyn closed her eyes. Her next memory was familiar, dark, and full of blues, and the tears threatened to come back for another round much sooner than expected.

“Don’t try to catch them in hopes you can control them,” Chirrut could be heard echoing in the cave of her memories.

She saw her father, blue and weary and tired, framed by the crumbling rocks from above, and then, suddenly, the blue of Cassian’s parka.

 _He no longer wears that parka_ , she thought to herself as she recalled the way he called out for her, his hand outstretched desperately so that they could both make it out alive.

“Experience the memories, and acknowledge that you feel sad, but let them pass into the sky, and let them go,” Chirrut’s voice echoed again as another part of the ceiling fell to the ground.

He was never going to stretch his hand out for her again, and the realization threatened to break her like the walls surrounding them.

Her eyes opened once again and she let out a cry.

“Chirrut,” she breathed, nearly hiccupping, “I can’t, I just can’t-“

Chirrut placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. “You can. Just not today. Tonight, this is enough. We’ll practice more tomorrow.”

 

The meditation left her feeling so raw that she had a hard time letting her fatigue lull her to sleep. What would happen if she closed her eyes again? Would another memory come back? Would she be forced to relive it and feel the pain all over again even when she was out of tears to cry? Her eyes were bloodshot, her gaze listless, and she had a hard time taking in the soothing strokes of K2’s slim, metal fingers sorting through her hair.

“I take it your meditation with Chirrut didn’t go so well?” he asked.

“I’ve been through worse,” she responded. To some degree, it was true; her body had experienced some the most painful situations that she’d be more than happy to forget about, but surviving them was a cinch. It was so much easier to try and convince the mind to focus on something else, anything to distract the brain from the body. But when the mind itself was under attack, burdening itself with reminders of the things she missed out on or could no longer have and memories of the mistakes she made…

She noticed K2 pause when she took a shuddered breath, but was thankful he said nothing, and continued to braid her hair when her breathing resumed to its normal pace.

“Did you know that Cassian was the one who re-programmed this voice?” K2 said suddenly, and it caught Jyn so off-guard that she turned to look at him questioningly, but couldn’t come up with a response.

“As I’m sure you know, KX-series droids don’t talk like this,” he continued, ignoring her bewildered expression.

She nodded, still unsure of the small-talk he was engaging in.

“Our comms package was specifically designed to be much more soothing and calm, to unnerve our targets even further by the stark juxtaposition of our ability to kill.”

“Your voice is still pretty soothing,” Jyn remarked as he fastened the elastic around the final braid.

“By design, yes,” he agreed, walking over to her closet and taking Cassian’s parka off the hanger to hand it to her. “But we were programmed to talk formally, in the event that we had to escort dignitaries. I sounded like a politician. So he opted to combine the tone of a protocol droid’s comms with the snippiness of an astromech’s- thanks to him, I found a new voice, but was able to retain the formality of my origins as while enjoying the increased limitations of expressions of my re-programmed self.”

She arched a brow as she took the parka from him and settled it neatly next to her in the empty bed spot. “’Increased limitations of expression’?”

He nodded. “I was only installed with knowledge of Basic, after all.”

 _Of course the Empire would leave its mark like that,_ she thought wryly.

“If you’d like, I could install a profanity algorithm,” she offered.

“But not a translator?”

“Translating things between languages is hard. Algorithms can’t even get the job done. But organic sentients are great at installing _profanity filters._ We get our hands on one for most major languages in the galaxy, and we can reverse it so that you can use all the profane words and expressions to communicate _something_ you don’t like.”

K2’s optics moved back and forth, assessing the offer.

“I’ll take it.”

Jyn grinned. “We can find one on our next assignment.”

He nodded once before turning his attention to the light switch in her quarters. “Well, good night Jyn.”

The lights flicked off as Jyn returned the greeting in kind, and she snuggled under the thin sheets, clutching the parka possessively by the arm. It was unlike him to engage in small-talk, Jyn thought, still wondering why he decided to randomly speak about Cassian. It was as though he wanted to make a point about it, even though the factoid seemed to have none-

_Unless K2 is trying to give me happier memories to focus on._

K2’s optics were still lit as he was preparing to enter sleep mode, but she caught him in time. “Did you know that Cassian hates running?”

Jyn could hear the whir of K2’s chassis as his neck swiveled to look in her direction.

“Of course, why else do you think he prefers to be undercover in roles where running is least expected?”

She knew her smile wouldn’t be visible in the dark, but it was noticeable from the way she said, “Once, I told him that he ran like a baby Zeer learning to walk, and he was so embarrassed by the comparison that his ears went red.”

“…I hadn’t actually noticed that. But now that you mention it…” K2’s voice trailed off, and Jyn took the silence to mean he was scanning his own memories for comparisons.

“It’s pretty funny, isn’t it? We were always escaping danger so I never stopped to think about it. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t unsee it, and since then Cassian tried to make sure I was running ahead of him.”

“This whole time, I always thought he was just trying to get another view of you.”

“I’m sure that was icing on the cake for him, but, really, he was just afraid I’d mock him again.”

The two didn’t say anything more after that (not that they needed to), but Jyn was grateful for K2’s decision to engage in small-talk.

 _Then again, it’s not really small-talk if there was a much bigger purpose for it_ , she thought as she finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *

As the days progressed and a new daily routine began to emerge, Jyn’s meditations were becoming easier. Although she still occasionally cried uncontrollably over certain memories, she was able to look at most of them with a distant sadness that she could more easily move on from. She wasn’t ready to admit it, but K2’s strategy of offering sillier memories of Cassian on nights when the recollections were particularly painful helped immensely.

As the days progressed, Jyn felt like she could finally move on.

She still greeted Cassian’s parka in the morning, but it continued to hang off the closet with each passing day. With each passing night, Jyn began to migrate towards the center of the bunk, spreading her limbs to stretch them out and relax them from the fatigue of training new recruits. It was strange to develop a rapport with them, but here she was, Jyn Erso, a respected member of the Alliance in her own, jagged way.

If only Saw could see her.

If only Mama and Papa could see her.

If only Cassian could see her.

“I’m sure Cassian would love to hear that- perhaps you can tell him one day when you see him again,” Chirrut chuckled at the dinner table.

Jyn rolled her eyes- if there ever _was_ an afterlife to speak of, this “achievement” was far from being one of the first things she’d tell him.

Baze seemed to agree. “I think she’d be too focused on telling him other things instead.”

“Oh yeah?” Chirrut asked. “Like what?”

“How about ‘I’ve missed you’ for starters?”

“Is that what you’d say to me when I join you in the afterlife?”

“Did you just assume that I’d die first?” Baze glared.

The rest of the table couldn’t help but laugh at Chirrut’s cheeky grin.

* * *

She still wasn’t off-planet as often as she would like, but she did get regular assignments to act as backup for Bodhi’s humanitarian missions. The nature of the missions themselves weren’t really Jyn’s cup of tea; there was no fighting involved (a point Draven felt the need to emphasize before she took off every single time), and after that…

Jyn watched the sun-worn, wrinkled hands of a mother feebly take a package of rations, blankets, and basic medicine from Bodhi. She knew from the slight plumpness in her cheekbones that they were probably both around the same age, but her eyes were deadened with fatigue and lack of food, and her posture spoke of hard labor with very little return for it. A small child clung to the hem of her faded dress, looking curiously up at the box, and Jyn could hear her communicate with him in a language she wasn’t quite familiar with. Based on the weary, but warm tone of her statement and the subsequent brightening of the boy’s face, Jyn was pretty certain that the youngling was met with good news about food.

It made her heart wrench- the sight was all too familiar of the years she spent on the streets, weakened from hunger and looking nearly pitiful (if not outright _sad_ ) as she scrapped up offers of free food and basic supplies and residing in communities that, as the Empire would like to say, were “not yet liberated and emboldened by the might of the Galactic Empire”.

She glanced to the side at the Stormtrooper who stood nearby, hands gripping their blaster as they watched over the whole transaction (for peacekeeping, allegedly), but none of the crew was so easily fooled; it was no secret that the Stormtroopers were dispatched to make sure that Rebels wouldn’t try to covertly recruit people by luring them in with promises of food and safety. The Stormtroopers made sure that humanitarian aid groups such as the one Bodhi his crew claimed to be affiliated with gave the masses hope, but not _too much_ hope. _Give ‘em enough to want to see tomorrow, but not so much that they think of betraying the “good graces” of the Empire,_ she thought bitterly.

Perhaps her face had accidentally warped and curled itself into a sneer- the Stormtrooper had glanced back her way. “What’re you looking at?” the voice snipped, and Jyn could see the subtle clenching of fingers around the Stormtrooper’s blaster.

Jyn shook her head. “Nothing- sun’s too bright,” she lied.

“That better be all,” they said before turning their attention back to the long line of hungry organic sentients receiving food from Melshi and Bodhi.

If she was honest, they all looked ridiculous with their disguises; hers in particular was itchy around the nose, but she had to try her best to refrain from scratching it, lest the prosthetics peel off and they become scrutinized even further. She was always a fan of the “act like you belong, and no one will question it” method of operation, but Bodhi, rather wishing to avoid confrontations, insisted that “the best disguises are often the simplest ones,” and before she could protest, he’d instructed her to curl her upper lip inward to let the adhesive for her nose set. It hadn’t gotten them caught just yet, so she had no choice but to grumble inwardly about how uncomfortable it was while counting down the minutes left until they had to pack things up and head back to Thila.

Try as she might to not scowl over these assignments, however, Jyn _had_ to admit that they had their purpose.

“Based on some the data obtained from our informant, it appears as though the Empire is easing off on the search for Rebel activity, but only slightly,” K2 confirmed during the hyperspace stretch of the trip back.

“I still can’t believe we managed to smuggle a singular box of weaponry to her without getting caught,” Melshi said between bites of his ration bar.

It was a bit surprising, yes, but the weight of the supplies helped sell the limp as the informant hobbled back to her home, and the mini data drive was tucked neatly in Melshi’s glove with the wave of a hand. All in all, a clever ruse.

“Indeed, but it appears as though the Empire has other larger fish to fry,” K2 remarked.

Jyn arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

“There have been reported complaints sent in by representatives from Outer Rim planets regarding an extreme loss of local resources due to a sudden increase in demand for raw building materials by the Empire.”

“Expanding their operations by demanding them from Outer Rim territories at dirt cheap prices,” she concluded. “Likely at blasterpoint.”

“The likelihood of that is quite high, yes.”

“That hardly seems like anything new, though,” Melshi shrugged.

“I think it’s cause for concern,” Bodhi chimed in as he settled down with a plop between Jyn and Melshi. “Sometimes the Empire does really obvious things because they just don’t care. But other times, they have something up their sleeve; it starts off slowly, then happens all at once. Best case scenario, we’re worrying over nothing, but I’m sure Draven will somehow find this information useful once we get it to him.”

 

Whether or not Draven found the information useful was hard to tell at first glance, but Jyn liked to think that he found them sufficient, given that he continued to give them assignments. When they were sent out for their fourth humanitarian assignment, Jyn was already prepared- rations, her parka, her scarf, a vibroblade, her truncheons, and a blaster. Baze, ever-ready to prepare, packed the crew with a few extra weapons hidden in nooks and crannies installed in the ship (“We’re rebels, after all,” he said amusedly), and Chirrut sent Jyn off with a kind hand-squeeze.

“Don’t forget to meditate while you’re traveling as well,” he reminded her gently. “It’s still just as much a routine as anything else.”

She returned the gesture with a warm smile and a sprightly nod. “I will.”

* * *

Their destination was on a rather chilly planet; based on the briefing back on Thila, the terrain was largely cold, barren and rocky, but she didn’t realize it would look so much like Wobani, and she inadvertently winced at the memories coming back to haunt her. Jyn clutched her wrist and her thumb smoothed across the faint scars from the too-tight binders as she scanned the horizon, and soon enough, Stormtroopers marched up to their ship’s ramp to run their inspection routine.

“Scandocs,” the one on the left demanded, their masculine accent carrying a city-slicker accent. It wasn’t anything to be offended over- this was procedural, after all.

“One for each of us on board, sir,” Jyn said with an air of artificial saccharine, as she handed them off to The City-Slicker.

He inspected each one individually, taking care to check for possible signs of forgery as the Stormtrooper on the right peeled away to inspect the rest of the ship.

“Everything checks out, Dawn Willix,” The City-Slicker reported as he returned the scandocs to Jyn.

She smiled politely. _Thanks- made ‘em myself_!

“Ship checks out, no contraband items,” the other Stormtrooper announced as she stepped back off the ramp. Her voice was low and heavy, as though she was trying her hardest to make it obvious that she was in charge.

The City-Slicker nodded in acknowledgement. “Scandocs are legitimate. They’re clear to distribute care packages.”

The Boss looked at Jyn (or, rather, her helmet seemed to look in Jyn’s direction and scan up and down). “One box per family. Single-file line only. Your crew are responsible for making sure recipients behave, or you’ll be subject to punishments. No funny business, or we shoot.”

“Cross my heart, ma’am- you’ll witness no funny business from us,” Jyn answered back spiritedly. By Jyn’s own assessments, the line came out forced, and she wanted to roll her eyes to the back of her head with this identity. But this was the complete opposite of her true persona, and if this is what it took to not wear that Force-forsaken prosthetic nose, she was going to make sure she tried her best to sell the image.

Care packages were aplenty, but there was no way there’d be enough for the number of families that gathered to fall in line. Though The Boss made it very clear that rowdiness would not be tolerated, the warning seemed to be unnecessary: not a single organic sentient dared to step out of their line. The silence was eerie, spare for the shuffle of footsteps as the next family left and the line moved forward, and Jyn had to push back memories of the snowy days she had to rappel deep into holes for ore on Wobani. She shivered reflexively, pulling the hood of her parka over her head for added warmth. The fur lining brushed against her forehead, but it just wasn’t the same as someone else’s parka hood, wasn’t as soft-

 _No, Jyn, this isn’t the time to think about that,_ she reprimanded herself, and straightened her posture while tallying their inventory and looking out to the never-ending line of organics.

It was all procedural after that- a family would come forward as one left, register their family name, receive a box, and move on. There were systems in place to alert the team if the families attempted to double-dip, but no one even dared to try. She glanced at the children, who continued to cling to their parents and hide between their legs the closer they stood to any of the Stormtroopers watching closely.

Much like in their other humanitarian assignments, the Stormtroopers stood with legs comfortably apart and ready to spring into action when provoked, gripping their blasters as though they were _expecting_ someone to misbehave. The display wasn’t necessary to uphold order, Jyn realized over time, but instead served to snuff out any stirring hope for resistance by showing that the Empire had the power to give and take away resources to an already impoverished region.

The thought made Jyn’s blood boil, and she resisted the urge to clench her fist; they were still undercover, so to speak, and she couldn’t afford to cause a fuss, but-

“NO!”

Jyn’s focus snapped to the source of the noise, about twenty or so families down the line, who suddenly got into a tussle. A human man flailed about, his wiry limbs struggling to overpower the others, who were trying their hardest to keep him down.

“You can’t do this to us again!” the man screamed in accented Basic, and his tousled black hair hid his eyes. The others in his immediate vicinity continued to try and shush him, while the others turned away and stayed frozen on the spot, refusing to move or even _look_ at the scene unfolding. Jyn could see the nearby Stormtroopers standing at attention, and although the others remained in their place, not taking their gaze away from the rest of the line, The Boss left her spot next to Bodhi and walked over there, blaster at the ready.

To Jyn’s left, The City-Slicker leaned closer. “We told you- no funny business.” His grip on his blaster tightened and Jyn’s heart raced.

To her right, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Melshi stiffen.

The situation had to be defused, quickly.

“Oh dear, we’re going to have to talk to that gentleman,” Jyn chirped half an octave too high for her persona, and jogged lightly over to the scuffle. She made careful note of where her vibroblade and truncheons were located on her body; though they were secured in less than ideal places to fit her disguise, she could still grab and utilize them at a moment’s notice. The trick was in making sure the innocents could easily be separated from the Stormtroopers to allow for a clean attack (if it was necessary, at least). If she was particularly unlucky, however…

She was going to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

“STAND DOWN!” The Boss ordered, her voice as low and threatening as possible.

“Please,” an elderly woman begged, her accent even thicker than the man she feebly tried to calm down. “The hunger’s just gotten to him, he doesn’t know what he’s saying-“

“Control your family member, or you will all be executed,” the nearby Stormtrooper commanded, albeit with less authority and more with a matter-of-factness bordering on sheer boredom. They seemed less interested in exerting authority over the family and more irritated instead at the disruption of what would have otherwise been an innocuous day.

The Boss wasn’t keen on that tone. “You have five seconds to stand down or we will shoot-“

“Now, now,” Jyn said soothingly, cutting in before the Stormtroopers could do anything more. “Alright, sir, there’s no need to fuss, I’m sure that-“

“You can’t do this to us!” the man yelled again before being held by his lanky arms by two other men (brothers, perhaps) and brought down to his knees to face The Boss.

Jyn didn’t get a good look at his face, but it was his tousled black hair, the way it layered, the way it curled at the ends against the base of his neck, the grit in his voice, the well-worn dark leather jacket and dirt-caked boots, and the slight tan in his skin that made her heart stop.

She knew it wasn’t Cassian- it couldn’t be- but her heart raced and slammed against her chest as the similarities punched the air out of her lungs.

It took considerable effort not to let her voice crack. “Please, ma’am, I’m sure there’s something we can do, I-“

“What can _you_ do?!” the man screamed, unable to turn around and face her. “You just gave out the last supply package. This is the third time already. No matter what happens, we return home emptyhanded. No food, no supplies, no meds. These Imperial lackeys don’t do kriff about it, and they don’t even _care-_ “

The Boss silenced him with a swift blow across the face with the butt of her blaster before looking up at Jyn, as though she’d swatted a fly and resumed conversation.

“You know the rules,” she said.

Jyn’s eyes darted between The Boss and the man brought to his knees. She looked at the others- the women had a deadened look in their eyes, numb to the scene in front of them. The children, sensing panic, and clung more desperately to their elders as they tried to shield their own. The others who continued to look on had their eyes shielded by older siblings and parents. The men- especially the ones restraining the one on his knees- kept their gaze to the ground, as though they hoped that The Boss wouldn’t interpret any wandering eyes as a challenge, or out of a hope that they wouldn’t have to see one of their own be executed.

“Please don’t shoot,” she breathed, no longer using Dawn Willix’s voice. It didn’t matter if this man wasn’t Cassian- she couldn’t afford to watch him die right in front of her. The blackened charred body was bad enough as it is.

But it was too late- The Boss pointed her blaster between the man’s eyes and fired.

A scream cut through the air. Time seemed to slow for Jyn- just as the man fell face-down to the ground, a faint buzz sounded and the crowd split, eyes wide, and the thrumming sound became muffled as a red-hot vibroblade plunged itself into The Boss’s neck.

Jyn took a deep breath to recover from her scream, but wasted no time in grabbing The Boss’s blaster as she, too, fell to the ground, and quickly shot at the nearby Stormtrooper to take them down.

Pandemonium ensued.

The line broke as the families, snapping to their senses, screamed and scrambled to grab their children and elderly to pull them away from Jyn and the Stormtroopers, who quickly closed in on her.

 _Fine,_ she thought. _Bring it on._

She shot one more Stormtrooper in front of her before shoving the butt of the stolen blaster backwards and upwards, satisfied at the resulting sound of bones cracking through another Stormtrooper’s helmet. But the blaster was heavy, and she readily dropped it to bring out her truncheons before launching herself to the right, aiming for The City-Slicker. She swung viciously- _one, two, crack_ \- and he, too, fell to his knees before he could get a word out. Jyn leapt over him, leaving his shattered helmet behind as she struck her next target.

Finally, Jyn could breathe.

Finally, she could do what she did best.

Finally, she could take down Imps.

 _For Cassian_.

One-by-one, the Stomtroopers fell in a cacophony of blaster shots, shattered visors, and cracked bones. Squelches erupted with each jab and slice of her vibroblade, mixing with the panicked screams of the families. She felled the next one, and the next, on and on until the last one fell to their knees and the screams became a distant hush.

The fight was an exhilarating blur, until it wasn’t.

“JYN, STOP!”

The last Stormtrooper collapsed, their blood spilling out through their armor and seeping into the grey dirt, and Jyn snapped out of her streak to find Melshi pointing his own blaster at her.

“Stop,” he begged, his breath fogging in the air.

“Melshi, it’s fine, I took care of it, and they’re all dead-“

“LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE.” He dropped his blaster and pointed sharply into the distance, over to the hills where the families continued to flee. Tanks rolled into view, flattening the ground beneath it, not caring if organic sentients were standing in the way. Fallen bodies dotted the landscape, and although most were Stormtroopers, there were far too many innocents implicated, and her heart sank.

In her rage, she let them die.

She effectively killed them.

“We have to go!” Melshi yelled, grabbing Jyn’s arm and dragging her to their ship. The ramp closed before the tanks could get within firing range, but it didn’t stop them from trying to shoot them anyway. K2 and Bodhi tried their best to rush out regardless, swaying the ship this way and that to avoid the barrage of blaster shots as they lifted off the ground and zoomed off-planet before any additional backup could be called.

The ship was deadly quiet as they reached hyperspace. Bodhi and K2 murmured to each other- something about taking a longer route to lose any prospective followers- as they made additional calculations for fuel and supplies to accommodate their detour.

Melshi paced back and forth in front of Jyn, clearly unsure of what to say, but the tension built up in his shoulders, causing him to appear stiff.

“What were you thinking?!” he finally yelled, pausing to press his fingers to his temples.

“That there are now fewer Stormtroopers for the Empire to do their bidding,” she responded, but even she didn’t believe her own words.

“That’s idiotic.” He sighed. “Jyn, why this all of a sudden? You snapped; what happened?”

“He didn’t deserve to die,” she muttered.

“It was going to be him or us either way, you heard the rules. We were only there to distribute care packages, not to fight the Empire.”

“That’s precisely it, Melshi!” she yelled back. “We’re _still_ not fighting the Empire. We’ve trained for this-“

“No, Jyn, _you_ trained for this,” he snapped, and Jyn could hear his accent thicken in his anger. “You are literally the only person in this squad whose specialty is going for the offensive. The rest of us? We’re fine trying to take down the Empire in ways that _don’t_ involve putting a spotlight on our asses so that low-level Stormtroopers can point their fucking blasters at us!”

He stepped closer and she could see the rage in his eyes. There was no mistake- she snapped, she fucked up, and Melshi knew she knew it.

And then…his eyebrows went from a furrowed glare to an upturned look of resignation, and he sighed once more and took a step back, covering his face with one of his hands.

“It’s because he looked like Cassian, isn’t it?”

 _So he saw it, too_.

Her silence was enough of an answer for Melshi.

“You fought a few lackeys and killed them; I am willing to bet every credit I’ve ever owned in my lifetime that those families are being punished as we speak…But I’m guessing you figured that out already.”

Jyn’s eyes were downcast as she gave a weak nod. The disappointment in Melshi’s voice wasn’t helping matters. Anger, she could take. Disappointment, on the other hand…that was rubbing salt in the wound.

“What happened?” he sighed. “We were going to get back up and keep fighting. I thought you had it under control. I thought you moved on.”

Her frustration lumped in her throat, pushing her to tears.

“…I thought I _had_.”

There really wasn’t much more to say on the matter. Melshi could have any number of rants to throw her way, but it wasn’t going to change anything. Those Stormtroopers were dead. More than one innocent sentient was dead. She jeopardized the team’s safety because she snapped.

And for what? Petty revenge by proxy?

Jyn gulped. “How do you think Draven will respond?”

Melshi didn’t answer immediately, and Jyn knew he was trying to find the best way to sugarcoat the answer. But rather than bother with a more delicate answer, he instead responded simply:

“Bodhi will have to include this incident in the report. And if he won’t, _I_ will.”

She nodded as a chill sank in her gut.

* * *

Jyn knew Draven wasn’t going to take the incident well. In fact, she well expected him to reprimand her and dole out some appropriate punishment.

As the ship finally touched ground on Thila, Jyn prepared herself. Whatever he planned to do, she was willing to accept it.

She wasn’t prepared, however, for the prolonged silence between her and Draven as the rest of the crew, recognizing the tension in the air, quietly shuffled out of the post-assignment debrief without a word.

They sat at opposite ends of the absurdly long table again. But this time, instead of a predator ready to strike, Jyn felt like prey: cornered, waiting to be captured and squeezed until she squeaked and fell limp. It was maddening that he continued to say nothing; he instead drummed his fingers on the table and stared directly at her while his chin rested on his other hand.

Jyn recognized this tactic- if she spoke first, he would use the opportunity to take her words and throw it right back at her. She didn’t want to make this worse than it already was.

Just as the silence was becoming too unbearable, Draven spoke.

“So you attacked several Stormtroopers,” he recounted. “During a humanitarian aid assignment.”

She said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

“Did you, or did you not?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I did, sir,” she answered back.

“Did these Stormtroopers attack you?”

“After I killed their leader, yes.”

“And did _that_ Stormtrooper attack you first?”

Jyn recognized _this_ tactic as well- he was asking a series of questions designed to force her to come face-to-face with her actions. Each question built up the narrative to fully highlight the stupidity of what she’d done, much like a parent to a child, and that sinking feeling in her gut sank even lower.

“Answer the question, Erso,” Draven demanded.

“No, sir.”

“So you killed this Stormtrooper because…?”

“She murdered one of the innocents in cold blood, sir. For falling out of line and causing a ruckus.”

“That Stormtrooper took one life in front of you, so you only felt it natural to take an eye for an eye,” he concluded.

“No, sir, that’s not-“

“Oh? Then surely you had a much more logical train of thought behind killing not one, not two, but an entire squad of armed Stormtroopers because one of them decided to shoot one- _ONE_ \- organic sentient between the eyes.”

Jyn rose to her feet. “They were _starving_ the entire population, and killed one hungry human to put the rest in their place. When I killed their leader, I snapped, I know, but if I didn’t kill the others then and there, they would have opened fire on everyone else- “

“And, in your murder spree, you’ve given the Empire the justification to tighten their hold on these organics even further ‘for their protection and safety’. Rather than acting with calculated restraint like a member of the Alliance, you opted to show the brutality of your Partisan side.”

Jyn absolutely loathed such a blatantly biased comparison between her previous faction and her current one, but Saw’s sense of brutality _was_ a bit much at times. As much as she wanted to argue the semantics of what a typical Partisan was actually like, it was futile to do so when her own second father was the poster child of the group as a whole, and the image was _not_ pretty.

“Now, instead of having a few thousand troops on that planet, Imperial activity will likely increase tenfold.”

There wasn’t anything Jyn could say in her defense.

“What were you _thinking_?” he asked with snappy exasperation in spite of his otherwise neutral appearance.

“I…“

Does she dare tell him the truth? That it was because the man, from behind, resembled Cassian so much that it broke her heart to witness even a doppelganger die at the hands of yet another Stormtrooper? That she thought she moved on, but instead she gave in to her anger?

Draven continued to stare at her, hardly blinking, waiting for an answer.

“…I wasn’t,” she finally admitted.

The answer seemed to appease Draven, who finally broke eye contact with her to regard his datapad. “It says here in the report that you… _disposed_ of the leader of the squad assigned to monitor the distribution of aid packages because the person they killed bore a very strong resemblance to someone you knew.” He looked back up at her but slowly rose to his feet, reasserting his towering height over her small stature.

“It’s clear that you haven’t gotten over his death,” he concluded.

It was in the tone of his voice, that condescending hint of a nag accompanying the sentence, that made her blood begin to boil.

“That man looked like Cassian, and I had to watch him die,” she said in a low warning. “Between that and his _actual_ burnt corpse, it was hard to be bombarded with the image. _I cared too much._ ”

Draven, too, knew what fighting words sounded like.

“There are ways to show caring; acting on sheer rage and emotion and taking it out on others is far from the best one.” He leaned forward on the table, and his eyes darkened. “Don’t mistake everyone else’s ability to move on more swiftly as a sign that they care less than you do.”

Jyn scoffed and rolled her eyes. “You didn’t give him a funeral.”

“All high-level Intel operatives must have their remains disposed of before others become aware of their existence- they don’t _get_ a funeral.”

“So you rushed to move on so you could act like he never existed.”

“Because to most of the Rebellion and the rest of the galaxy, he never _did_.”

“He did to me!” Jyn yelled, unable to contain her rage, and she slammed the table with open palms. “Cassian was my friend! My home! My _partner_ -“

“CASSIAN WAS _MY SON!_ ”

Jyn froze. She’d never seen Draven make an outburst to this level; it was completely unheard of. His face was pink and his ears were red from the fury he contained for far too long, and his hands curled into fists against the tabletop.

The only thing worse than his sudden loss of composure was the raw pain in his voice as his head hung. When Papa made that holo for Saw, he sounded so tired, so resigned, and yet still so hopeful that his daughter, his Stardust, was alive out there, somewhere…

Draven never had the luxury of hoping, not when his son returned dead.

“You could have _died_ , Jyn. You put an unnecessary target on your back because you attacked without saying a word to anyone else. You put your teammates in a position where they were unprepared to back you up if they needed to.”

Jyn felt the nostalgic sting of an all-too-familiar argument he had with Cassian.

Clearly, she hadn’t learned from her mistake.

Here were two of the closest humans in Cassian’s life, devolved into an argument over who cared more for him, even though he was long gone. It was a pointless fight with no winner. All she wanted now was to curl up and cry her frustrations out.

“I promised him-” he said, more quietly this time, and Jyn noticed his reversion back to referring to Cassian by a pronoun rather than by his name, “-that I would protect the ones he loved. Like it or not, that means decisions have to be made. You’re not a Partisan anymore; you are a member of the Alliance. And if you can’t keep your rage checked, you leave me no choice but to ground you again.”

It was only fair as a punishment, but it failed to temper her vexation. She wanted to have a more active role in carrying out the goals for the Alliance; she worked best on the field, in the thick of things, not forging scandoc after scandoc on-base. Granted, any task was better than no task at all, but she relished the familiar thrill of the adrenaline of on-field fighting.

Thanks to her rage, that momentary indulgence landed her back indoors.

“And, to make sure I can keep a closer watch on you,” Draven continued, “you’ll be working with Comms. We’ll put your forgery skills to good use by monitoring and creating active clearance codes. The Empire has increased their security at a number of shield gates, and we need to make sure our operatives can enter and leave without suspicion.”

Jyn remembered nodding, but the assignment and this confrontation left her drained to the point of hollow numbness.

She hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings after that; her body switched to auto-pilot as she made her way back to her quarters. Despite her history of carrying out questionable deeds through even more questionable methods, there wasn’t a lot in life that she regretted.

This was certainly one of them.

“So you’re being sent to Comms,” K2 said upon her return.

She nodded idly, tossing her vest, jacket, and parka aside in a trail of clothing before mindlessly kicking off her boots and climbing into the bunk.

“At least you’ll get to help pick out a witty response for The Weatherman,” he added, reaching to find some sort of silver lining.

“Uh-huh,” Jyn replied with a hollow tenor as she curled up with her back to her droid friend.

After a period of silence, K2 tried again. “Don’t you want your hair braided before going to bed?”

“Mm-mmh,” she grunted, not bothering to shake her head.

Silence befell the room again.

“You know,” K2 began once more, “Draven’s reprimanded Cassian quite a bit in his youth-“

“Kay, _please_ ,” she pleaded sharply. “Not now. Not tonight.”

“…Do you want to be left alone?”

She sighed. “I want this moment to not exist.”

“The probability that you want to be left alone is high. Very high.”

Jyn could hear the clunky footsteps approach the door, and they swished open.

“I know it doesn’t help matters, but I understood why you did it. I thought he looked like Cassian, too.”

Melancholy and guilt lumped painfully in her throat again, and she said nothing.

“Good night, Jyn,” he said at last. “I hope you feel better in the morning.”

The lights flicked off and she watched the projection of K2’s silhouette on the wall disappear behind the doors as they swished back shut.

She curled up even tighter. Emotions clouded her mind and swirled around her so quickly that she wasn’t even sure what she felt anymore. At this point, it was much easier to just cry it all out.

The whole ordeal might have proved too much for Jyn to bear, however; no matter how much she wanted to do it, she found her hollowed self all out of tears to shed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, we've reached the last angsty chapter! Things are only going to go uphill from here, folks ~~even if it seriously doesn't look like it~~. I've got three more chapters planned, followed by an epilogue.
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking it out with me so far, especially you, Sissi; this fic is straight-up a year in the making and i'm so sorry that I'm not yet done with your _actual_ prompt, but I need to borrow all this to set the stage for the sequel, so I hope that you all find it worth the wait and the effort.  <3


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